Kentucky returns home Tuesday to take on the Missouri Tigers. Lets take a look at what we can expect in our 2nd conference game.
When: Tuesday, January 9th at 7pm ET
Where: Rupp Arena
Channel: ESPN
Missouri So Far
Coming off a very good first season HC Dennis Gates had a quite a bit of hype around his program (if you’re on social media you know that Missouri fans were very chesty). Alarm bells started ringing in mid-November after a home loss to Jackson State. Missouri has improved slightly as they hung around with Kansas on the road and pushed a sneaky good Seton Hall team for a full 40 minutes. They’ve failed to win any meaningful game though (including losing by 26 to rival Illinois) and are coming off a close home loss to Georgia.
How Does Kentucky Matchup
Missouri is kind of like a less talented version of Kentucky. They take a lot of 3’s (average one more than Kentucky), but don’t shoot it nearly as well (but still a healthy 34% on the season). They also don’t turn the ball over. The Tigers typically will always have 4-5 guys on the floor who are comfortable shooting.
Missouri struggles defensively (174 in Kenpom) but do a decent job of trying to overcome that by creating HAVOC with blocks and steals. As we saw last year in Columbia, Gates uses that aggressive defense to feed into his offense.
When Missouri shoots poorly they tend to lose (in the loss to Jackson State they turned the ball over a ton) so Kentucky will want to not let them walk into easy looks on the perimeter because if that gets choked off, I don’t believe the Tigers can score enough to win on the road.
Player To Watch
Missouri has 4 guys who average double figures, but the best of the bunch is Sean East II. The 24-year-old guard (who is from Louisville and starred at New Albany High School) has really taken a leap in his 2nd year at Mizzou. He’s averaging 17 points, 4 assists, and 3 rebounds, and 1 steal a game while shooting a blistering 54% from 3.
He also has experience playing against Kentucky as he played 20 minutes and scored 12 points and didn’t miss a shot in last year’s 89-75 Mizzou win.
Who Wins
Kentucky should win but they’ll need to play well. Missouri is capable of scoring enough to stick with Kentucky and as we saw last year getting in a hole against Dennis Gates is a recipe for disaster. However, I think this Kentucky team just has too many guys who can step up at any moment. Adou Thiero will probably be a game-time decision again but if he can play and give Kentucky 10-15 minutes, I think that could be really important. He is the perfect profile to help slow Missouri down. If he can’t go I expect the game to be closer for a little longer than any of us want and we’ll need the version of Aaron Bradshaw that showed up in the final minutes against Florida.
Kentucky wins this one 84-72.
