Great night at Mizzou Arena...

Mizzou beats an undermanned Iowa St. team. They only had 8 players in uniform. Don’t know if they had a bunch of injuries, or what, but I think we could have scored anytime we wanted to inside.
Speaking of inside, Tilmon is the real deal! Might be the best post player to ever wear a Missouri uniform. MPJ bruised hip was a non factor, but it was nice to see we could dominate another team without his presence. A reporter at halftime told me it wasn’t anything serious, but they held him out, much to the chagrin of the sellout crowd, for precautionary reasons.
Puryear lead us in scoring off the bench, but the guy just cannot jump at all. When he goes inside he gets stuffed 99% of the time. He has a great mid range jumper, but if he gets a rebound, the best thing he should do is kick it back out. Barnett did his thing too. Geist looked good. Wouldn’t mind seeing him at the point, and Robertson at the 2 guard. He’s feisty if nothing else.
There were several things that needs work, but if you think Martin is a slow down offense type of guy only, think again.
A couple things I’d like to see more of, is penetration by the guards, and kick it out to the 3 pt shooters when the defense collapses around them. And, feed the post. Tilmon can score on anybody. We also need to hit the offensive boards more and better. 17 turnovers are too many too.
Defensively, I’d like to see more of Johntay and Tilmon in the game at the same time. That would keep teams from penetrating to the rim. If Barnett is going to play the 3, then he needs to be better at guarding. He’s a little slow footed to guard a 6’5 guy that can drive or shoot the 3. Our point guard and 2 guard need quit collapsing in the middle so much. We have big guys that will stop that. Focus on not letting the opposition have wide open 3’s. The Clones were cold early from outside, but they were open nonetheless. In the 2nd half, they started hitting a few of those wide open shots. Good teams will exploit that on us.
Overall, I thought we played very well for the first game. The players played like a team, and seemed to have good chemistry. This was a concern for me, with so many talented freshmen coming into the program. You never know how that’s going to work, but Cuonzo made sure the upper class men got a lot of minutes for the most part. And they contributed very well.
After tonight, I think our best and starting 5 should be Geist, Robertson, MPJ, Barnett, and Tilmon. (Of course that’s subject to change as the year progresses) Johntay, Puryear, will get a lot of minutes. Harris looked like a freshman, and Phillips was a non factor. CVL and Nikko are mop up guys. I didn’t see C.J. Roberts play at all. I might have missed him though.
That’s what it looked like live. How did you see it on television?