No. 22 Missouri looks like itself again in home win over No. 16 Ole Miss

Eli Hoff, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Jan 25, 2025

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COLUMBIA, Mo. — That's more like it.

No. 22 Missouri men's basketball bounced back from its worst offensive outing of the year, dispatching No. 16 Mississippi, 83-75, Saturday.

The Tigers (16-4, 5-2 Southeastern Conference) looked like their normal selves against the Rebels (15-5, 4-3), getting to the free-throw line at will, crisply knocking down 3-pointers and winning the rebounding battle.

Mizzou's combo guard tandem of Tamar Bates and Caleb Grill carried the scoring load with 26 and 22 points, respectively. They combined for nine made 3s as the Tigers shot 44% from beyond the arc as a team.

Four Ole Miss players scored in double digits, though the Rebels were significantly colder from deep.

The victory is MU's 15th in a row on the Mizzou Arena floor, extending a home winning streak that entered Saturday as the longest in the SEC and fifth-longest in the nation. The game was also the Tigers' third consecutive sellout.

With its 5-2 record in league play, Missouri sits third in the SEC, trailing No. 1 Auburn and No. 4 Alabama but ahead of No. 5 Florida, over which it holds a had-to-head win.

Ole Miss started the scoring with an 8-0 run, but Mizzou responded with 12 straight points to wind up in the driver's seat for most of the first half.

Bates gave the Tigers their first lead of the day on a spinning drive through the lane for a lay-in.

MU went with bigger lineups for the core part of the first half, swapping the starting balance of three guards and two tall wings for two guards, two wings and a traditional center. At times, that composition flummoxed a Mississippi defense that wanted to switch every action it saw, leading to some wide-open 3s for perimeter players like Grill.

When the Rebels lagged behind on one three-man Missouri set, nobody closed out on Grill standing in the left wing, and his 3 with with 9:04 to go in the half opened up a six-point advantage.

That grew to nine points a few minutes later when Grill drained a corner 3 through contact, hitting nothing but net as the Ole Miss defender hit him for a four-point play.

Mizzou led 38-31 at halftime.

The Tigers were able to expand that advantage as the definition of what a foul is did, too. Missouri earned eight free throws within the first three minutes and change of the second half but made just four of them.

That has been a disconnect for MU so far this season, with the team leading the nation in free-throw attempts per game but sitting 181st in free-throw percentage.

After making just four 3-pointers as a team against Texas on Tuesday, Grill made his fourth with 14:10 to go, keeping Missouri up by eight points. Forward Jacob Crews became the fourth MU player to connect from deep a few minutes later.

The uptick in fouls called put MU in the bonus before the game was even in its final 10 minutes.

A bungled defensive rebound opportunity for Missouri brought Ole Miss within three points with about 10 minutes to go, but Grill — not just an effective shooter this season but a timely one at that — knocked down his fifth 3-pointer of the evening to keep the Rebels at bay. Two made free throws by forward Trent Pierce, then a crafty cut to the rim that led to a layup, restored a 61-53 lead.

There's a basketball strategy, favored by both teams in this game, of turning defense into offense. In one novel sequence, the Tigers turned fouling into points. A foul called on Grill just before a media timeout with 7:45 on the clock was upgraded to a flagrant I offense, giving Mississippi two technical free throws and a possession that led to more Mizzou points than Ole Miss got: One made free throw for the visitors and a steal that created a drunk for the hosts.

The Tigers opened up a double-digit lead for the first time in the game with about six minutes to go when Grill grabbed his own miss and kicked it back outside, setting up a catch-and-shoot 3 from Bates for a 66-56 advantage.

MU point guard Anthony Robinson II, who scored seven points and grabbed seven rebounds — the latter a notable contribution to the first-half run that put his team in front for good — fouled out with 3:40 to go.

When a couple of fouls called on the hosts allowed the Rebels to encroach on the lead, Bates lulled his defender to sleep with a crossover and hit a dagger of a 3 for a 73-63 lead inside the final three minutes.

Mizzou's struggles with handsy full-court pressure made the final 120 seconds perhaps more complicated than they needed to be, but the Rebels never threatened to a particularly dangerous degree. When the Tigers got a win-clinching defensive stop just inside the final minute, Bates secured a rebound, bounce passed it through the Ole Miss press, turned to the MU student section and let out a yell.

Missouri will be idle during the SEC's round of midweek games for a bye of sorts, then resume play on the road at No. 14 Mississippi State. The Bulldogs (16-4, 4-3) beat South Carolina in overtime earlier on Saturday.