Mizzou’s Big 12 Tournament ended Thursday night with a drubbing at the hands of Texas A&M. How should Missouri’s stock be valued heading into Big 12 Tournament play? Let’s take a look:
Schizophrenia
Week-to-week, game-to-game, minute-to-minute, Mizzou can be a different team. Google the “MIZZ” symbol for a stock quote, and you’ll see a line that looks like a heart monitor. Missouri can show up on the glass at random or get annihilated on the boards. It can dominate the ball handling battle, or it can throw balls away like Chuck Knoblauch in the late 1990s. It can attack and get to the rim like it did fairly often in Kansas City, or it can take 37 minutes of gameplay to get to the line like it did in Lincoln.
Mizzou: A GREAT buy for the investor whose life insurance pays bank for heart attacks!
Kim Engilsh
Things had been so, so poor for Kim English that a slight market correction this week represent a nice step up for the junior from Baltimore. English earned a spot in the starting lineup against Texas Tech on Wednesday and responded with 15 points. In the Tigers’ three-game losing streak in the games preceding the Big 12 Tournament, English had combined for 11 points on 20 field goal attempts and turned the ball over seven times. His confidence remains a work in progress, but even he admitted to the media after Wednesday’s game how nice it was just to see the ball go in the basket.
Underpromise, overdeliver. Moore had 30 of his better minutes of basketball during Mizzou’s two-game stay in the Big 12 Tournament, alleviating some of the pressure put on the Tigers by the foul trouble of Laurence Bowers and Ricardo Ratliffe.
Laurence Bowers
Bowers didn’t quite live up to the lofty standard he set for himself in February, but he had partly his foul troubles to blame. Bowers at his A-game is a tremendously difficult threat for teams to counter, but a minimized Bowers surrounded by an unconfident Missouri team makes Mizzou one incredibly volatile stock heading into tourney time.
Mike Anderson’s ability to win against Texas A&M
Anderson’s stock in games against A&M did not drop despite a poor Missouri performance on Thursday. I’ll make no mention of the stock trading at zero prior to markets opening.
The Brothers Pressey
Better days have been had by the current generation of Presseys. Phil Pressey came up with 14 points in two games, but did so on 25 percent shooting from the field. Matt Pressey, who was one of the most trusted members of Mike Anderson’s “second line” so often in November and December, has since vanished, contributing five points in 26 minutes of play.
Swagger
Sell sell sell?
The collective sum of the bench
For the last two seasons, Missouri’s bench was truly what set it apart. During two years in which the Tigers went 4-2 in the NCAA Tournament and won a Big 12 Tournament title, Mizzou’s starting five was usually only marginally better if not worse than the starting five of many of its legitimate opponents. What set Missouri apart was the ability to avoid a tremendous drop-off when players six through ten entered the game and ran teams into the ground. RIght now, Missouri is the Denmon and Bowers show. And while Barnum and Bailey are a great show, they aren’t much without the rest of the circus.