Kentucky coach Mark Pope admires the job Missouri coach Dennis Gates has done this season. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Missouri has struggled in recent games losing at Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Oklahoma and winning only at South Carolina going into Saturday afternoon’s game with visiting Kentucky.
Missouri is 21-9 overall but is 18-1 at home and 10-7 overall in conference play and ahead of Kentucky (9-8) in the Southeastern Conference race.
Missouri has a trio of talented outside shooters in Caleb Grill, Tamar Bates and Jacob Crews that have combined to make over 35 percent from 3-point range.
Another concerning stat for Kentucky is that Missouri leads the SEC in free throw attempts and also has 6-8 Mark Mitchell who averages 14.2 points per game and shoots 53.4 percent from the field.
“They have incredibly capable shooters that are dangerous,” Kentucky Mark Pope said Thursday. “They have really dangerous perimeter players. They’ve got a non-traditional starting five, four, who’s unbelievable in iso. He’s coming off more ball screens than any big in our conference. He’s really, really effective at it.
“They have an ability to kind of focus on some places they want to attack, and come back to them over and over and over again. I think coach (Dennis) Gates does a great job. They’re a really well-constructed roster.”
While Pope has received credit he deserves for the job he’s done with Kentucky in his first year, Gates’ coaching job has been equally impressive. The Tigers did not win a SEC game last season in Gates’ second year but Missouri is ranked 15th nationally.
“I’m really happy for him because I’m a huge fan of (Gates),” Pope said Thursday. “I think one of the great stories in college basketball is how they’ve responded.”
Pope and his Wildcats will have a chance to add a tragic chapter to that story when the two teams collide this weekend. It’ll mark the second-ever head-to-head battle between Pope and Gates, the first a 69-59 victory for Pope’s BYU team over Gates’ Cleveland State squad in the 2021-22 season-opener. There’s a mutual respect between these head coaches, and a mutual understanding of each other’s offenses.
“There are some similarities (to Kentucky),” Pope said when asked about Missouri’s offense. “We run a lot of the same actions offensively, we kind of value spacing in the same way offensively.”
Both teams like to play at a high pace and shoot 3-pointers. Pope said about 22 percent of Missouri’s possessions are in transition and that is aided by the Tigers ranking seventh in the country in steal percentage. Missouri averages 18 points per game off turnovers.
“They’re a really high-level steals team. They’re one of the best steals teams in the country. But if you kind of dig deeper in the numbers, their transition is still prolific, even if you take out the steals numbers,” Pope said.
3 Responses
It should worry him.
Worries me, too.
When you play Missouri in Columbia, you had better be worried about their defense. They seem to always get the best officials that money can BUY and that allows them to play defense with hatchets, but nobody EVER fouls out. They have only lost once on their home court this season. On the road, they have lost to Texas, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, and Oklahoma. Catch them away from Columbia and they are beatable. Play them in Columbia, good luck!