Mizzou makes NCAA Tournament, will play Friday in St. Louis

For the third time in the past four seasons, Missouri men’s basketball is going dancing.

The Tigers are the 10-seed in the West Region of the NCAA Tournament bracket and will play the Miami Hurricanes on Friday in St. Louis during the First Round.

If Mizzou advances, it will play the winner of the matchup between 2-seed Purdue and 15-seed Queens.

MU shares some significant ties with Miami. Hurricanes associate head coach Charlton “CY” Young was on Dennis Gates’ staff for his first three seasons in Columbia, and Miami also has a former Tiger on its roster in Marcus Allen.

Two players who could end up playing key roles in the matchup, Anthony Robinson II for Mizzou and Tre Donaldson for the Hurricanes, were teammates at Florida State University High School in Tallahassee.

“There are similarities, there’s familiarity, and there’s relationships on both sides,” Gates said, “and they’re coached by a heck of a coach in Jai Lucas.”

MU enters March Madness with a 20-12 record and went 10-8 against SEC competition during the regular season. The Tigers have lost three straight games heading into the opening week of the Big Dance, most recently losing 78-72 to Kentucky in the second round of the conference Tournament.

But Mizzou’s wins against top teams including Florida and Vanderbilt, plus its placement in the key metrics strength of record and wins above bubble compared to other squads near the cut line, made MU’s status on Selection Sunday fairly secure.

The Tigers dropped close games to Arkansas and Kentucky in the last two weeks but also gutted out tight wins over multiple tournament teams in Tennessee, Texas A&M and the Commodores during a strong month of February.

“The characteristics that we have learned, those lessons that we have learned, is very important to my team, my guys, and it helps you in the postseason,” Gates said when asked about his team’s hot and cold streaks over the past two months, “And that’s what I hope to reveal, being able to win close games, being able to take in the environments. That’s the most important thing.”

Thanks in large part to that grouping of February wins over quality SEC opponents, multiple starters for Mizzou will make their first NCAA Tournament appearances.

“There are several guys who’ve never been to the tournament before; Jayden Stone has never been to the tournament and Shawn Phillips Jr. has never been to the tournament, so those guys, and obviously our freshmen, they get to experience something that will last a lifetime,” Gates said, “One shining moment is the anthem, and it’s one of those things that we talk about at the very beginning of the season when we get together and just get to know the best of one another, so it’s exciting.”

The Tigers’ bid this season gives them consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances for the first time since the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons under Frank Haith. It’s also the first time MU has received March Madness bids in three out of four years since the program made five straight trips to the tournament from 2008-09 to 2012-13, spanning the tenures of Haith and Mike Anderson.

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