MO playing the Illini tonight

[Quillback]

Going to watch this one, Illini ranked 6th in the nation, Mizzou has beaten some quality teams and is looking good.  

[Bushbeater]

Good game, Mizzou wins. Not to sure about some of the refs calls. Too many fouls messed up the flow of the game. The flagrant call at the end was questionable also and ended any chance the Ill had.

[Quillback]

Yep big win for Mizzou. And I agree on the officiating, way too many fouls and so many were borderline.  

[Al Agnew]

On 12/12/2020 at 10:22 PM, Bushbeater said:

Good game, Mizzou wins. Not to sure about some of the refs calls. Too many fouls messed up the flow of the game. The flagrant call at the end was questionable also and ended any chance the Ill had.

But did it?  It resulted in one point for Mizzou.  And yes, Mizzou got the ball as well, and ran the clock down to 10 plus seconds with a three point lead.  Illini had ten seconds to get a good shot, but great defense by Dru Smith on Dosumnu and a bit of the yips by the Illini star resulted in a bad shot with a whole 4 seconds left.  Ten seconds is an eternity.  Ask any Mizzou fan, and they'll just say "Tyus Edney".

It was a horribly officiated game, with the quick whistles not only detracting from the flow of the game but giving first one team and then the other an advantage; it seemed the bad calls came in cycles, first several against Mizzou, then several against Illinois.  Bad calls and bad no-calls were a lot of what got the Illini back in the game after Mizzou went up by 13. 

Explanation today was that the flagrant 1 had to be called with any forcible contact above the shoulders.  So by the letter of the rule it was the proper call.  Cuonzo is apparently still waiting for an explanation of why Kofi's basket wasn't waved off.  Post Dispatch writers want to know why it couldn't have just been called an offensive foul.  Apparently the rules don't allow for either of those scenarios.  Main thing is, you gotta wonder why it wasn't called as it happened, since they'd just fouled Tilmon out on far less contact while jockeying for position.  

[Al Agnew]

Starting to get excited about this team.  Depth and experience.  They still aren't a good shooting team, but they play great defense, they rebound well, they play a lot smarter than the last couple years, and they appear to be mentally tough; they don't let adversity get them down.  They've responded well every game when it gets tight.  If you'd told me before the game that Tilmon and Mark Smith would both have bad games and foul out with a total of I think 7 points between them, I'd have expected an Illinois blowout.  But the other guys got it done, especially Mitchell Smith and Pickett off the bench.  And Dru Smith is one of the best defensive players I've seen in a while.  Pinson needs to be more consistent, but can drive against anybody; just needs to look to pass when everybody collapses onto him in the lane.  

[Quillback]

I am looking forward to the Hogs playing Mizzou on Jan. 2.   No doubt Mizzou has a better team, but I think the Hogs will play them tough.  Hard to gauge this Hogs team as their schedule has been nothing but cupcakes so far.  They really need to schedule some games against tough opponents before they start SEC games.  They'll play Auburn before Mizzou so they'll at least have one reasonably tough opponent before getting Mizzou.

Mizzou vs Tenn, on Dec 30 should be a good one too.  As of now they are the only 2 ranked SEC teams.