My Mizzou Tigers have been invited to the Big Dance twenty-five times in history and have never made it to the final four. Is this the year they break through?
Their bracket assignment this time around falls on a two line in the soft West region. Many Tiger fans initially interpreted the seeding as a snub. Turns out it’s a gift, especially if you believe the public comments of the NCAA tournament selection committee chairman.
Jeff Hathaway said the committee viewed Mizzou as the weakest of the four #2 seeds. He went out of his way to cite Missouri’s weak non-conference slate to defend that view against polls that put the Tigers in the top four nationally. Even if Hathaway believes what he said, it doesn’t jibe to put the weakest 2 seed in the same region as the team universally viewed as the weakest 1 seed.
If you’re rooting for the Tigers, you just let go of the Hathaway nonsense and run with it. Six games in 18 days. Two each in Omaha, Phoenix and New Orleans if all goes well.
My concern with this Tiger team is its lack of bench depth. Michael Dixon is the only non-starter who plays meaningful minutes. Dixon is a great sixth man, but he’s limited mostly to the perimeter. When big man Ricardo Ratliffe needs a blow, the Tigers are all small. Fast, yeah. But a bit too reliant on shot-making and the three ball. It’s not the classic formula for success in a competition that has often rewarded board hogs and defense.
On the flipside, the six guys who led this team to the conference title appear to have great chemistry. They score lots of easy baskets using the same frenetic push on the gas pedal implemented by previous head coach Mike Anderson. They make free throws. Scoring leader Marcus Denmon is a 90-percenter from the line. When many of the other elite teams throttled down in their conference tournaments to save gas for the Big Dance, Mizzou seemed hell bent on exiting the Big 12 with a tourney title despite being banged up a bit. They’re a tough group and they appear to like each other.
Haith still hasn’t publicly explained his deep entanglement with a slimeball booster at Miami but obviously has done a lot with a team that could have been dispirited by Anderson’s bolt.
I can’t pick Mizzou to win the whole thing but I think their path to the final four makes it a decent shot they’ll get there. That’s not a bold statement for sure. The Post’s Lenn Robbins has Mizzou winning the championship.
For the record, Mizzou made the tournament three of the four seasons I was on that campus. Each time, they were ousted in the first round (lost to UAB in ‘86, Xavier in ’87 and Rhode Island in ’88).
-The venue for Mizzou’s first two tourney games this year is the CenturyLink Center in Omaha. There will likely be lots of empty seats for the MU-Norfolk State game in a building that holds 17,500. Thousands of tickets for the Omaha sub-regional were sold to Creighton season ticket holders and that team will be playing in the Big Dance in Greensboro the same afternoon Mizzou is playing in Omaha. It’s also believed many tickets are in the hands of KU fans who played a hunch the Jayhawks would open in Omaha. Kansas does indeed play in Omaha Friday, but will appear in the second game of the night session. Since NCAA tournament tickets are typically sold in three-session bundles, it’s customary for some fans to skip a game or two on a day with four contests. Of course, easy access by buyers and sellers to the secondary market will reallocate some of that stock but it’s hard to picture Omaha being a beehive when Mizzou tips off Friday afternoon.
-Iona’s at-large inclusion in the field of 68 isn’t outrageous but Northwestern is a stronger team whether one uses the computer metrics at the committee’s disposal or not. Is strength of schedule as highly valued as the selectors want you to believe? Northwestern slugged and fought valiantly through the 21st best SOS in the land while Iona’s mid-major slate had them ranked #144. Northwestern’s overtime loss to Minnesota in the Big Ten tournament left the Wildcats with a 8-11 record in conference games. I understand the unwritten rule that sub-500 league records merit automatic exclusion but inviting this Northwestern team would have made for a better tournament.
-Let’s assume Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim had an inkling before Sunday night that his program would pull the plug on Fab Melo’s season and waited until Tuesday to announce it. If that’s the case, I don’t believe there’s anything crooked about the decision. Syracuse earned the one seed off its body of work and protected it by keeping a lid on Melo’s self-made predicament. You can bet the committee would have thought long and hard about downgrading Cuse had it known Melo would stay home. Committees over the years have penalized teams for losing players to injury late in the season. They likely would have held the Melo news against the Cuse. That said, Boeheim’s tactic to retain the one seed will only help so much. Melo’s banishment makes it impossible for Syracuse to win this tournament. He’s that important. He’s a rare specimen on the defensive side and he’s gonna be a big-time NBA player.