No. 7 seed Missouri men’s basketball enters the Southeastern Conference Tournament needing momentum.
Although the Tigers bounced back from a 2023-24 season in which they finished 8-24 overall and 0-18 in SEC play, they tumbled to the finish line of the 2024-25 regular season.
Mizzou (21-10) is riding a three-game losing streak, falling to Vanderbilt (97-93 in overtime March 1), Oklahoma (96-84 on March 5) and Kentucky (91-83 on Saturday).
SEC Sixth Man of the Year Caleb Grill believes Mizzou needs to do the little things better to break the skid.
“We had kind of that mentality (where) we wanted to prove everybody (wrong), and we were doing a lot of the little things and were doing them at a very effective level,” Grill said Tuesday in a news conference. “ If we get back to flying around and playing at the pace we want to play at. I think we can get back to where we were playing at before.”
Mizzou received a bye into the second round, but that posed the challenge of not knowing who its opponent would be until about 22 hours before tipoff.
The Tigers will play 10th-seeded Mississippi State at 6 p.m. Thursday. The game will be broadcast on SEC Network. The winner will play second-seeded Florida in the quarterfinals at 6 p.m. Friday.
The Bulldogs dismantled 15th-seeded LSU 91-62 in the first round Wednesday.
“You’ve got to flip the switch, because it’s no preparation other than walkthroughs,” Mizzou coach Dennis Gates said. “ You want to concentrate on your team and then concentrate on the opponents while also understanding it could be LSU, it could be Mississippi State. Anything can happen in this conference.”
Mizzou will take on Mississippi State (21-11) for the second time this season. The Tigers won the first meeting 88-61 on Feb. 1 in Starkville, Mississippi, a game in which MSU shot 36.4% (20-for-55) from the field and Grill drained six 3-pointers and finished with 20 points.
Mizzou has struggled when playing a team for a second time this season. The Tigers picked up home wins over Vanderbilt (75-66 on Jan. 11), Arkansas (83-65 on Jan. 18) and Oklahoma (82-58 on Feb. 12) the first time around but fell to all three on the road in the second meeting.
Mississippi State is led offensively by sophomore guard Josh Hubbard, who scored a game-high 26 points in the first-round win over LSU. Hubbard had 24 points in the Bulldogs’ loss to MU and averaged 18.3 points per game in the regular season, good for fourth in the SEC.
Mississippi State has a dangerous sixth man of its own in KeShawn Murphy. The junior forward had 16 points and nine rebounds in the first matchup against MU and averaged 11.6 points and 7.5 boards per game in the regular season.