MIZ-ZOOM: They’re Still Kentucky

In a typical year, every SEC team circles Kentucky on their schedule. The perennial SEC power is often a team’s toughest game of the year, but this isn’t a normal year.

For whatever reason, Kentucky hasn’t been able to put it all together this season despite still having an abundance of talent. However, the last thing the Missouri Tigers will be doing as they prepare to play the Wildcats on Wednesday night is look at their record.

“They’re very talented. We’re going to have to come out and take their confidence away early,” said assistant coach Marco Harris, and Xavier Pinson preached a similar idea, “We just have to come in and not take this game lightly because of their record.”

The Tigers will look to improve defensively in this game after a shaky showing on that side of the ball against TCU. Despite great offensive production, the Tigers know that games in the 90s and 100s don’t favor them.

“I think we understand we kind of dodged a bullet there with TCU, we can’t get in those situations,” said Dru Smith, and Xavier Pinson added, “We can’t get away with trading baskets or letting teams score almost 100 points.”

While they did struggle defensively, the big stories from last Saturday were Xavier Pinson and Jeremiah Tilmon, and while Pinson might have matched his teammate’s production against the Horned Frogs, he and the rest of the team know that the Tigers run through Tilmon. Xavier Pinson said, “He’s really the source of what we do. We gotta go through him,” and Assistant Coach Marco Harris echoed that idea, “He’s been amazing since conference play. I think for us to go, he has to go.”