Calling a timeout with 11 seconds to play and down three points, Missouri University basketball coach Mike Anderson drew up a potential game-tying play with two legitimate options.
Deluxe scorer and point guard Stefhon Hannah could come off a screen and take the three-pointer himself, or he could find sharpshooter Matt Lawrence off a down screen for a clear attempt of his own on the left side.
Neither happened, and because of that, neither did a victory. Kansas University survived, 80-77, Monday at Allen Fieldhouse.
“You want to give the ball to one of the guys who shot the ball well,” Anderson said of Lawrence (19 points) and Hannah (15). “They did a good job defending it, and we didn’t get a chance to get a (clean) shot off.”
Lawrence credited KU’s Brandon Rush for not only sticking on him, but also disrupting Hannah’s path to a clean attempt when Rush was supposed to be tangled up in a screen down low. Lawrence ended up with the ball, but his shot was heavily contested and didn’t even get rim.
“He got over the top, so I wasn’t open,” Lawrence said of Rush. “He did a good job.”
Considering Lawrence’s knack for coming up big on Big Monday, a little thing like shaking off a screen may have prevented Mizzou from forcing overtime and climbing over the mountain. So goes the tale of Missouri’s conference season to date: Another close loss, this one dropping the Tigers to 0-4 in Big 12 play.
With the exception of a Texas massacre last week, the Tigers have been oh-so-close each time out, with diddly squat to show for it.
“We still lost,” Lawrence said. “You can’t take it as a moral victory. We’ve done that already, and it hasn’t helped us.”
Maybe so, but there’s no denying MU (11-6) played better basketball Monday than it has all conference season. The Tigers edged the Jayhawks in rebounds, played scrappy defense to frustrate KU and had a variety of players – from Hannah to Marshall Brown to J.T. Tiller – hit clutch shots to keep Mizzou in it throughout.
Lawrence was the most noticeable. With 9:01 left, he drilled his fourth three-pointer to put Missouri up, 65-60.
Kansas fought back and took the lead. Then it switched. Back to KU again. Then another advantage for MU.
In all, there were 20 lead changes – and on a night when a lopsided KU victory was expected, a three-point game illustrated just how exciting the Border Showdown rivalry really can be.
Anderson, MU’s first-year coach, got his inaugural taste of it. And without calling it a moral victory, he was able to tell it like it was afterward.
“Great college basketball,” Anderson said. “That’s Big Monday at its best.”
