Mizzou Women Unable to Keep Up with Tennessee, Falls to 11-11
Missouri women's basketball suffered their fourth-straight loss Sunday, falling 80-69 to Tennessee in Knoxville.
Missouri's offense put together a good performance, but for all four quarters, the Tennessee offense was clearly the better unit. In areas like shooting where Missouri was good, Tennessee was great. The difference was clear in the first quarter when the Tigers trailed 28-17 despite playing a clean offensive game.
The Volunteers also made much fewer mistakes than the Tigers. Missouri gave up 12 turnovers which Tennessee scored 19 points off of. Conversely, Tennessee gave up only 8 turnovers that Missouri only turned into six points.
The Missouri lineup lacked firepower due to the absence of graduate forward Hayley Frank. She's often the glue that holds the Missouri lineup together as the leading scorer and most experienced player. Frank's absence brought in Abby Feit into the starting lineup.
Missouri's starting five was already the youngest in the SEC and with Feit in the mix, the Tigers starting lineup included only two returning starters in Mama Dembele and Ashton Judd.
"When you look at our rosters and our lineups on the court, you've gotta a pretty heavy upperclassmen lineup in Tennessee and we've got a young players," Missouri head coach Robin Pingeton said. "Just that experience is huge and 'Frankie' is a fifth year senior and so she's been is some of these games. ... So we missed her a lot, for sure. Not only her scoring but a young lady that's been in these battles before."
Dembele and Judd both played significant roles in keeping Missouri in the fight but without Frank, the Tigers offense struggled to find consistency. Pingeton chalked up the lack of offensive rhythm to Frank's absence and a lack of execution of the motion offense.
"I thought we got a little bit heavy on the dribble," Pingeton said. "I thought we were trying to do to much off the bounce versus trusting our cutting and screening action."
Missouri trailed by 12 heading into the second half after a fiery first. The Tigers came out of the gates hot in the second half, going on a 12-0 run in the middle moments of the third quarter which brought them within three points.
The successful stretch included three-point makes from freshmen Grace Slaughter and Abbey Schreacke. Landing shots outside the arc was key to Missouri's offense in the first three quarters as they made 7-for-14 in the first three quarters. In the fourth quarter though, Missouri only made 1-of-7.
The 12-0 run for Missouri, however, was followed by an 11-0 run from Tennessee that Missouri was never able to recover from.
Missouri will continue their season on the road Thursday by traveling to Columbia, South Carolina, to take on the undefeated No. 1 Gamecocks at 6 p.m.
