Missouri Heads to Nashville for the SEC Tournament

Missouri picked up another win last week, at home against Auburn on Senior Night, but then followed that up with another road loss, 52-43 at Mississippi State.

It was nice the Tigers could squeak out at least one more win against Auburn, with senior Keith Shamburger hitting the winning shot in the 63-61 victory in his last game at Mizzou Arena.

Missouri (9-22, 3-15 in SEC play through Sunday) had only two seniors to recognize on Senior Night, and they combined to play three years at Missouri, with Shamburger transferring from Hawaii and Keanu Post transferring from a junior college. If coach Kim Anderson is likely to succeed at Missouri, he’ll likely need more long-term, four-year seniors to build his program around.

The Tigers’ loss at Mississippi State (13-18, 6-12 in SEC), in which they scored their second fewest points of any game this season, meant Missouri went winless on the road this season, losing all 10 true road games. Dating back to last season’s win at Arkansas, Missouri has now lost 15 straight road games.

Mississippi State wasn’t exactly burning up the scoreboard, but for a while it looked like the Tigers might not get to 40.

Through Sunday, Missouri is 322nd in the country in scoring, at 60.7 points per game.

With the regular season now complete, Missouri heads to Nashville for the SEC Tournament to finish up the season. It’s mostly just a psychological thing, but winning at least one game there to get to double-digit wins would provide at least a small consolation for the Tigers.

The story of this SEC Tournament, of course, is whether Kentucky (31-0) can win it and enter the NCAA Tournament undefeated.

Missouri hasn’t made much noise in its first two SEC Tournaments, going 1-1 each year and bowing out in the quarterfinals. However, in both years, the team that beat Missouri went on to win the tournament (Ole Miss in 2013 and Florida in 2014).

It’ll take a while for these SEC Tournaments to be as big a deal for Tiger fans as the Big Eight and Big 12 Tournaments in Kansas City were, but making some deep tournament runs would help.

It may not matter given how Missouri has struggled this season, but the bracket is set up for the Tigers to have a chance to win a game or two in Nashville.

Missouri, the tournament’s 14 seed, plays on the tournament’s opening night, Wednesday, against 11-seed South Carolina (8:30 p.m. on SEC Network). The Tigers lost 65-60 at South Carolina on Feb. 10. The Gamecocks (15-15, 6-12 in SEC) have their own offensive struggles.

If the Tigers can win, they’d get 6-seed Ole Miss on Thursday and then 3-seed Georgia on Friday in the quarterfinals (both games would be about 8:30 p.m. on SEC Network).

It’s been a miserable season, but a win or two in the conference tournament would be a nice way to close out the season.

Editor’s note: Benjamin Herrold grew up in Daviess County and graduated from Gilman City High School. He then graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and now writes as the field editor for Missouri Farmer Today and is based in Columbia. He visits home frequently and owns a farm in Daviess County.