Missouri Basketball: Takeaways from down-to-the-wire loss against Florida

Defensive DNA?

I could copy and paste my takeaways from the Auburn game, and the same would largely still be true for Wednesday night’s matchup. What would be the fun it that, though?

Instead, I’ll just rehash the biggest point. Defense.

Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin prides himself on the team’s “defensive DNA.” While the results might not be paying off quite yet, they certainly are yielding dividends.

Myreon Jones picked up 15 points in the first half for the Gators. This, on its own, is obviously terrible for Missouri.

However, the Tigers correctly identified the threat at the half and shifted their focus on shutting him down. The result? Jones, the Gator’s scoring leader, missed every field goal that he took in the second half.

This gave Missouri a pretty strong second-half lead, where Florida was trailing for a majority of the period.

"“Once we settled in the second half, I thought our defense was better,” Martin said in the postgame presser. “We didn’t do a very good job on [Tyree] Appleby.”"

Appleby, unfortunately, took Jones’ place in the second half to put together 17 points of his own.

This leads to an important question. Sure, defense can’t be taught to an extent. However, is it really “in their DNA” if they only shut down the guy after a coaching break?