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The Missouri Tigers had the potential to be one of the best teams in college basketball last season, but didn’t have the defensive capabilities to win games late. Now, the Tigers lost their three leading scorers, will bring in a talented new head coach in Kim Anderson, and will look to rebuild a program that has rapidly fallen from the NCAA tournament lock they were a few years ago.
The Tigers face a difficult non-conference schedule, with games against the Arizona Wildcats, Oklahoma Sooners, Xavier Musketeers, Elon Phoenix, Lipscomb Bison, Oklahoma State Cowboys and Illinois Fighting Illini. Missouri will find it difficult to win against all these teams, which means that the only “gimme” wins for the Tigers in non-conference play will be against UMKC, Oral Roberts, Valparaiso and Southeast Missouri State.
The good news for Mizzou is that there is a lot of talented youth on this team, including freshmen like Jakeenan Gant, Montaque Gill-Caesar and D’Angelo Allen, as well as sophomores Wes Clark and Johnathan Williams III. They should finish with around 16 or so wins, with several close games against better opposition. Missouri has a rough conference schedule as well, but will benefit from playing three of the SEC weakest teams, twice each.
The Tigers are not a top-half team in the SEC talent-wise. However, I’ve been calling for the Tigers to ditch Frank Haith since the loss to Norfolk State a few years ago, because he’s never had what it takes to coach a team on strong defense. Now that Haith is finally gone, Anderson will have an opportunity to transform this program into something special.
This season may end in disappointment for the team and fans, but Mizzou is on the right path and should be back on track in a year or so. Have faith that the Tigers will be a better team without Haith.
Taylor Sturm is a Columnist for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @TSturmRS, like him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.
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