UPDATED, 12:25 a.m.
COLUMBIA, MO. • Before Wednesday, not a single current Missouri player was on the roster the last time the Tigers toppled a nationally ranked team more than four years ago. Heck, freshman power forward Jontay Porter had just turned 14 when Mizzou upended No. 18 UCLA on Dec. 7, 2013.
Since that afternoon home victory over the Bruins, the end of the Frank Haith regime had passed, plus the entire Kim Anderson era, before No. 21 Tennessee visited Mizzou Arena for a crucial midweek Southeastern Conference showdown.
But the streak didn’t live to see another day.
With a 59-55 victory over the Volunteers, the Tigers finally toppled a ranked opponent and, more important for this team, finally made enough clutch plays down the stretch to hold off a worthy foe. Forward Kevin Puryear extended his perfect streak on the free throw line in conference play with two must-have freebies with 4.4 seconds left to preserve the win after what nearly turned into another Mizzou meltdown in the final minutes.
The Tigers (13-5, 3-2 SEC) blew a 10-point lead with six minutes left and twice watched their advantage slip to one point, but the Vols (12-5, 3-3) couldn’t sustain momentum long enough to finish off their comeback. At the final buzzer, Puryear roared back at the raucous crowd, officially burying another reminder of the program’s troubled but now vanquished past.
“Big moment,” Puryear said after leading the Tigers with 12 points and 10 rebounds off the bench. “Big moment for Mizzou basketball. Big moment for this team, especially the guys who are returning. We took a lot of bumps our freshman and sophomore year. To see all the hard work paying off with all the additions we have now, it’s a great feeling. Now it’s not time for us to stop.”
• BOX SCORE: Mizzou 59, Tennessee 55
• MIZZOU CHAT: Dave Matter Live at 11 a.m.
Not at all. In an SEC packed with quality teams, the Tigers found themselves in fifth place at night’s end but face another pivotal test Saturday at Texas A&M (12-6, 1-5). The day began with Tennessee owning the league’s second-best ranking in the RPI at No. 12, making Mizzou’s victory all the more valuable in another high-stakes conference matchup.
“This is a typical SEC game,” Vols coach Rick Barnes said. “I think it’s going to be like this all year. They’re all going to be hard like this. It’s going to be a grind everywhere you go. I think it’s the best basketball conference in the country. There’s not a coach in this league who can look down the schedule and just say, ‘We can show up and play.’ Last year it proved it was a really good league. Now it’s the best.”
In first-year coach Cuonzo Martin’s first game against the team he coached for three seasons from 2011-14, Tennessee jumped out to a 10-3 lead as the Tigers missed five of their first six shots before the first media timeout. The Vols’ lead would reach eight before Martin’s bench changed the pace of the game. Puryear scored three times in five possessions and pulled the Tigers into a tie, 21-21, with a drive to the rim with 5:33 left. Mizzou evened the score three more times in the final four minutes, twice on Jeremiah Tilmon baskets in the low post.
For the second straight Wednesday, Porter drew the night’s most challenging defensive assignment. Last week it was Georgia’s Yante Maten, the league’s most established post player. Porter guarded Maten most of the night and outscored the senior 15-9. Next up for Porter, Tennessee 6-7 sophomore Grant Williams, who came into the night leading the SEC in scoring in conference play, at 19.6 points per game. Williams, giving up four inches to Porter, rarely looked comfortable in traffic with the freshman hovering in his shadow. Williams finished with a team-high 15 points but needed 12 shots to get there. He committed four of UT’s nine turnovers, incuding a costly pass that Kassius Robertson intercepted in the game’s final minute.
The showdown Mizzou rarely controlled early came on the perimeter, where Jordan Barnett was usually matched against Tennessee small forward Admiral Schofield, who’s in no way small. Martin joked on his radio show this week that he shares the same build with Schofield, one of the SEC’s most unique players, who at 6-5 and 238 pounds is among the league’s best rebounders but also a much-improved marksman from 3-point range. Schofield outscored Barnett 7-0 through the game’s opening 13 minutes but vanished late, finishing with 11 points to Barnett’s nine.
Much like last Wednesday’s win over Georgia, Missouri came out of the locker room the aggressor, scoring the half’s first seven points, including its first 3-pointer on 11 tries, a Barnett deep ball from the wing that sent a jolt through the home crowd.
The half opened with a rare sight: Tilmon sprawled on his back absorbing a charge on the defensive end. The 6-10 freshman has usually been on the other end of those calls, but the offensive foul on Schofield gave the Tigers a burst of momentum.
• MIZZOU TALK: Fans sound off about the Tigers' win
The Vols didn’t score their first points of the half until a couple Williams free throws 4:37 into the action. Tennessee didn’t stop there and ran off a 9-2 run, tying the Tigers on Williams’ baseline jumper that barely beat the shot clock.
Then came Mizzou’s run that appeared to put the game away — until it didn’t. In a span of 10 possessions, the lead changed sides on five straight scores, punctuated by Jordan Geist’s 3-pointer from the corner for a 43-41 Mizzou advantage. Mizzou followed with a Barnett dunk off Geist’s inbounds pass, then a Geist layup in transition. Kassius Robertson’s 3-pointer, his only 3 of the night, pushed Mizzou in front by seven heading into the 8-minute timeout. Another 3-pointer, this one from Porter, gave the Tigers their first double-digit lead, 53-43, with 6:43 left, but just like previous losses to Florida and Arkansas, Mizzou showed signs of buckling.
The Vols roared back with a 9-0 run as the Tigers went eight straight possessions without a field goal, only getting a pair of Puryear free throws to slow Tennessee’s rally.
But with a minute left, the Tigers stole a possession when Robertson snagged a bad pass under the basket, setting up a pair of Geist free throws for a three-point lead with 14 seconds left.
“It was a bad pass,” Barnes said. “We’re going to get somebody there but he can’t throw it if they’re not there.”
Barnes wasn’t pleased with his top player, noting that Williams’ feet barely left the ground on his first shot attempt in the game’s opening minutes. Martin credited Porter and Tilmon for limiting the Vols’ leading man to just five field goals.
“I thought our bigs did a great job making his looks tough,” he said.
The Vols still had chances, even though starting guards Jordan Bone and Jordan Bowden combined for only one field goal on 13 attempts. This is Barnes’ best 3-point shooting team since he coached Kevin Durant at Texas more than a decade ago, though the Vols made just 5 of the first 20 heaves from behind the arc. Still, they could even the score with another deep ball in the closing seconds.
But the Tigers never gave Tennessee the chance. With 14 seconds left, Martin gave Geist some vital instructions against UT ball-handler James Daniel III: Allow him to cross halfcourt with the ball, keep him from shooting a 3-pointer and foul him before he makes a play with the ball. Most important, squeeze the life out of that clock.
“Press up and let the clock tick, tick, tick,” Martin said.
Late-game execution had foiled the Tigers in their one-possession losses to Florida and Arkansas. The ball was in Geist’s hands last in both games, ending in a turnover (Florida) and a missed 3-pointer (Arkansas.) This time, the junior point guard aced his final assignment, fouling Daniel with 4.4 seconds left well before he could unload a shot. Geist finished with nine points and three assists in 33 minutes — and the season’s most important foul.
Geist “plays like that from start to finish,” Robertson said. “It’s not just because it was the end of the game or it was close. He’s a tough-nosed kid. I’m really, really happy he’s on my team. He makes plays for us. He hit two big free throws. We’re all really happy he’s on our team.”
Daniel made one of two from the line to make it a two-point Missouri lead, and from there the Vols fouled Puryear to extend the game another possession. They picked the wrong Tiger to send to the line. With two more free throws, Puryear extended his SEC streak of perfection to 17 for 17 to all but preserve the program’s biggest win in years. It had been 1,502 days since the last time Mizzou defeated a ranked team.
But first, one more stop. Jones got off a 3-pointer at the final buzzer as Puryear nearly committed a fatal sin, grazing him at the top of the key. But the shot missed, giving Martin a chance for one more teaching moment with the star of the night.
“I said, ‘Kevin, you jumped at that shot and we were up 4,’” Martin said. “‘Now what if he made it and you fouled him?’ He just said, ‘My bad, Coach.’”
They could both laugh about it later.
BARNES’ BIG 12 JAB
Barnes couldn’t believe the scoreboard as his team headed to the locker room at halftime. His Vols had been whistled for six fouls. Missouri, just two.
“I was kidding with the official because he knows I’ve coached a lot of games, but (I told him), ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever coached against a team that had only two fouls in the first half,’” Barnes said. “He said, ‘You ever coached a game where a team had one?’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’”
Then the veteran coach who previously coached at Texas dropped the walk-off line of the night, just as he strolled out of the interview room.
“But then I thought for a minute,” he quipped, “every time we went to Kansas, yeah that happened a lot.”
Rimshot!
“Thank you guys,” he said. “You guys know how that is. Ask Norm. He’ll tell you.”
Norm, of course, as in former Missouri coach Norm Stewart.
BARNES, BARNETT REUNION
Barnett signed with Texas out of high school to play for Barnes in Austin, Texas. The former CBC standout played for Barnes for a season then transferred to Missouri midway through his sophomore year when Shaka Smart replaced Barnes.
The two shared a moment on the sideline Wednesday.
“I yelled at him, ‘You know you’ve gotten better looking,’” Barnes said. “He didn’t want to acknowledge it but he cracked a little grin. … He’s everything we thought he’d be. We thought he’d be a terrific player at Texas. I wished we had him at Tennessee. We loved him. He’s one of those guys who’s just going to do what he does. I always thought he was a little flaky, which can be a good thing. He’s got a real short memory. If he misses it he’s forgotten about it before it hits the rim. He’s become the player we thought he’d be at Texas, and I’m happy for him. He’s a great kid.”