'We Need to Turn Our Mentality': Dennis Gates and Jesus Carralero Martin Assess Mizzou's Recent Struggles
After losing to Georgia and No. 6 Kentucky to open their SEC slate, Missouri men's basketball is searching for answers. Now sitting near the bottom of the SEC at 8-7, the Tigers will look to find their first conference win against South Carolina on Saturday. The home game against the Gamecocks comes after a road trip to Kentucky where Missouri lost 90-77.
"I feel like the team (has) to flip the switch," senior forward Jesus Carralero Martin said to reporters on Friday. "We need to turn our mentality. We need to start being more aggressive defensively and offensively. At times, it felt like they wanted it a little bit more than we did."
The loss against Kentucky illuminated many of the issues that Missouri has struggled with all season. An injured Tigers team was able to keep pace with the Wildcats for a majority of the first 30 minutes but did not make a single field goal in the final 10.
"We did get to the free throw line but we wasn't able to execute on the field goal in that moment," Dennis Gates said to reporters on Friday.
The Tigers were without freshman guard Anthony Robinson due to an illness, but Gates confirmed Robinson will return against South Carolina. Additionally, guard Sean East, Missouri's scoring leader, missed an extensive amount of time in the final 10 minutes after suffering a hit to the eye from a Kentucky player's elbow.
"The last stretch we didn't have Sean East for about six minutes," Gates said. "Just being back in rhythm, Nick Honor had to play 19 minutes without a sub because of that and we didn't have (Anthony) Robinson so our rotation was a little stagnant."
Honor playing almost the entirety of the second half is just one way the graduate guard has taken on an extended role this season for Missouri. The former Clemson player struggled against Kentucky, going 2-10 on field goals. Despite the lack of shooting success, Gates is not disappointed in Honor's production.
"Nick Honor is actually, compared to his career numbers, playing well," Gates said. "We want him to be superman. And sometimes we gotta put realistic expectations on young men. He's averaging 10 pts per game, there's only one other time he's averaged double digits, that was his freshman year of college at Fordham. So actually he is playing well, we just need him to be superman."
Honor has been asked to take on more responsibilities for Missouri due to a number of injuries the team has been dealing with. Gates and his staff have made an effort to be cautious to be sure Honor is not overloaded with his extended role.
"Sometimes, realistic expectations and goals must be set for these young men," Gates said. "Now what has to happen is we understand those minutes went up so we may have to take some minutes back and distribute them somewhere else. But he's playing good basketball. He really is."
The team has also been without Iowa State transfer Caleb Grill, who has been dealing with a wrist injury since early December. On December 9th the team announced the injury, stating that the expected recover time was 5-7 weeks. On Friday, Gates provided an update on Grill's recovery.
"Caleb Grill has never stopped being active," Gates said. He's been running, he's been engaged he's been doing things. He had surgery in an area that did not distribute enough blood for healing on its own. ... He's on course to get where he needs to be which is a positive. ... Mentally, he's impacting our team everyday."
The obscene of Grill's tenacious presence has led to Gates distributing playing time between guards John Tonje and Curt Lewis. Gates has been unsatisfied with the production of his bench though, which has only produced a combined 13 points in the last two games.
"We have to distribute our points in a better way, we need guys to play better," Gates said.
Looking ahead to South Carolina, the work will be cutout for Missouri as the Gamecocks have put together a 13-2 start to the season. Gates highlighted junior guard Meechie Johnson as the team's best player as he leads the team with 18 points per game.
"They play kinda similar to us," Martin said. "They play pretty spread out. High motor guys, really good point guards. But we're a better team and we gotta regroup again before playing tomorrow."
In order to regroup and recover from losing four out of the last five games, Martin emphasized the need to improve on-court chemistry.
"We got to play more together," Martin said. "Defensively, we gotta do a better job, we haven't gotten there yet. Our communication has to get better in the games."
Missouri will host South Carolina on Saturday at Mizzou Arena with tipoff set for 2:30 p.m.
