Missouri Basketball: Preview of important SEC matchup with LSU Tigers

Missouri Basketball looks to avoid what would be a bad loss to last-place LSU Tigers of the SEC. What do the Tigers need to advance?

Missouri Basketball (21-8) enters the last week of the regular season on a two-game win streak. First beating a strong Mississippi State team in their home court on a last-second three in overtime by Nick Honor and most recently Mizzou used a dominant second half on the road at Georgia to leave Athens with a 22-point win. Missouri looks to continue its strong late-season push to improve its SEC tournament seeding, still in the hunt for the coveted double bye. For this to happen Missouri will need to Baton Rouge and knock off a struggling LSU (13-16) team.

Missouri is led by seniors Kobe Brown (16.1 ppg 6.1 rpg) and D’Moi Hodge (14.0 ppg 3.7 rpg) and will look to them to get the offense off to a quick start against LSU. Mizzou saw the return of their high-powered offense on the road against Georgia dropping 85 points, something they had not done the prior three games where Missouri was only averaging 60.7 ppg.

In their previous meeting with LSU this year Missouri was able to ride a huge offense performance from Kobe Brown, who dropped 26 points while only missing one shot the entire night, to a ten-point win at home. Mizzou had three other players scoring in double digits against the lacking LSU defense.

LSU, like Missouri, saw success in their non-conference schedule but has not been playing well since the start of SEC play. They have won 2 conference games all season. Coming into the game against Missouri, LSU is 1-15 in their last 16 games. That lone win came against Vanderbilt at home, behind a massive offensive night from their leader senior KJ Williams (17.1 ppg 7.3 rpg) who scored 35 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. In their most recent game, LSU dropped a road game against Ole Miss, another game in which Williams had a strong offensive performance scoring 29 points.

The game plan for Missouri should be relatively simple. Score the ball and slow down KJ Williams. For most of the season, the first part wasn’t a problem, Mizzou is averaging 80 points on the season. Recently the ball just wasn’t finding the bottom of the net, Missouri is hoping that the 85-point performance opened the floodgates and got them out of their funk on offense. The second part, slowing down KJ Williams, might be a much more difficult task. Williams has the size and the ability to score all over the court, both are things the Missouri defense has trouble stopping.

LSU on the other hand will need to see a big offensive output if they want to keep pace with Mizzou. They are averaging 67.2 points on the season while giving up 70 points per game. LSU will have a hard time limiting all of Missouri’s offensive weapons, so they will need to control the offensive boards to get second-chance buckets or risk getting into a fast-paced game that favors Missouri.

If the same Missouri offense from the game against Georgia shows up in Baton Rouge, then Mizzou should be able to win this game easily. If Mizzou struggles to score the ball, then LSU should be in a spot to make it a close game. Missouri needs to keep winning to gain momentum heading into the SEC tournament, LSU is looking to play spoiler putting all the pressure on Missouri.