Entering Saturday, 4.8 seconds had a rotten place in Mizzou men’s basketball lore. That was the amount of time on the clock before UCLA’s Tyus Edney took an inbounds pass, raced up the court and sank a buzzer-beating layup off the glass to beat the Tigers in the 1995 NCAA Tournament.
The top-seeded Bruins not only survived an upset bid, but they would go on to win the national championship.
Advertisement
Just over three decades later, Mizzou found itself in a similar spot that UCLA was all those years ago (with lower stakes, of course). The Tigers were down by two to Oklahoma with 4.8 seconds left in overtime, as Xzavier Brown converted a one-legged jumper to put the Sooners ahead. Lightning had already struck once for Mizzou, as Trent Pierce drilled a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from the Mizzou logo to extend the game five more minutes.
Moments after Brown’s jumper, Mark Mitchell took an inbounds pass, raced up the court and sank a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to beat Oklahoma.
Mitchell said that the moment left him in shock, and that it was a blessing from God. T.O. Barrett, who scored a career-high 21 points in his first collegiate start, said he was in shock, too. On a frigid and snowy afternoon in Columbia, the Tigers sank two ice-cold 3-pointers that not only gave them a victory, but might’ve saved their season, too.
The calendar still reads January. The thrills of March Madness are still in the distant future, and there’s plenty of time for teams to beef up their resumes before then. But there’s an argument to be made that Mizzou needed to win this game to keep its NCAA Tournament hopes from slipping away.
Mizzou was in danger of losing four of five games on Saturday, something it only did once last regular season. Two of those losses came to Ole Miss and LSU, two teams that are outside of the current NCAA Tournament picture. The other was to Georgia, which took down the Tigers earlier in the week on a last-second layup from Marcus Millender. Mizzou quickly fell out of many projected brackets.
Advertisement
Losing to Oklahoma wouldn’t have had many silver linings. The Sooners dropped five games in a row after beating Ole Miss in their SEC opener, which included blowout losses to Mississippi State and Florida. Plus, power conference teams that make the NCAA Tournament via at-large berths often have a winning conference record. Last season, the SEC was an outlier, as its collective dominance was a big reason why six teams with 8-10 conference records made the Big Dance. This time around, a losing conference record likely won’t get many teams into the NCAA Tournament, if any. The SEC, while still likely to get well over half of its 16 teams into March Madness, isn’t nearly as strong this season.
If Mizzou had fallen to its border-state foes, there would’ve been several reasons why. Outside of Pierce and Mitchell’s game-saving shots, Mizzou made just four of its other 19 3-point attempts. Everyone not named T.O. Barrett, Mark Mitchell and Jayden Stone combined for just 22 points. The worst free-throw shooting team in the SEC left points at the charity stripe once again, shooting 24-of-33 from the free-throw line. Anthony Robinson II didn’t do much to potentially regain his starting spot from Barrett, as the junior scored just two points and committed four fouls in 17 minutes of action.
But as a wise man once said, big-time players step up in big games. After being on the wrong end of that sentiment earlier in the week, the Tigers were on the right end on Saturday.
Again, there’s still well over a month left in the regular season. Some teams that seem on-track for March Madness could very well fall out of the picture, while current outsiders could acquire dancing shoes by the time the Big Dance rolls around.
Advertisement
What the Tigers showed on Saturday, though, could serve them well over the rest of the season, starting with their breakout point guard. Expecting Barrett to score 20+ points every night is an unreasonable ask, but his performance on Sunday suggested a sustainable avenue for production going forward. He looked comfortable on both ends of the floor and had a handful of silky-smooth dribble drives that ended in crafty, controlled layups. He’s still not a threat from beyond the arc, mostly because he remains hesitant to even fire away from long range. But Robinson II’s struggles won’t be as worrisome if Barrett can continue playing at a high level in his place.
Elsewhere, as proved in wins over Florida, Kentucky and Oklahoma, Mizzou can win tight contests, even if it’s dropped a few so far as well. Saturday was, by far and away, MU’s most exciting act of the season.
Should Mizzou make the 68-team field, there will be plenty of reasons why the Tigers got there for the third time in four seasons under Dennis Gates. But there’s a chance that Pierce and Mitchell’s heroics just might be the biggest.
