Braggin’ Rights is heading back to the Land of Lincoln.
Despite a dogged second-half effort from Mizzou women’s basketball, the Tigers fell to Illinois 70-62, snapping a five-game winning streak and dropping to 9-3 on the season.
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“They competed, and we had a chance to win the game,” coach Kellie Harper said. “Going into this game, if you said ‘hey, it’s a two-point game with about a minute left’, I’d have felt pretty good about it.”
Mizzou went ice-cold when the stakes were the highest. After pulling within two points of Illinois with just over two-and-a-half minutes left in regulation, the Tigers missed seven of eight shots from the field, bookending a night that started horrendously for the home team with shooting the rock.
MU missed 13 of its 16 field goal attempts in the first quarter. It took almost five minutes for the Tigers to score their first points of the game; it took nearly three more minutes to make a field goal, and they didn’t make a shot in a halfcourt set until there were 55 seconds left in the opening frame.
“Illinois played very physical,” said Grace Slaughter. “(They’re) one of the more physical teams on the perimeter that we’ve seen.”
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The early scoring struggles were a combination of Mizzou missing open shots and Illinois playing sound defense. A handful of MU’s halfcourt possessions featured the Tigers trying desperately to get open with screens and dribble-drives, but almost nothing was working. Orange jerseys packed the paint, and Mizzou subsequently struggled once they got closer to the basket. Harper said that the Illini’s style of play “shook us a little bit” in the first quarter.
“We just did not handle the physicality,” Harper said. “A lot of that was on the ball. I thought they got after us a little bit, and our decision-making wasn’t as sharp. We made some ill-advised passes that we just haven’t done in a while.”
Mizzou got back on track in the second quarter, as a 7-0 run cut the Illini lead to one. Chloe Sotell made a handful of hustle plays on the glass and on defense that helped keep MU afloat defensively. Mizzou was also able to stay within striking distance of Illinois in large part because of its perfect 8-of-8 mark from the free-throw line in the first half.
The Tigers committed eight turnovers in the second quarter after committing just one in the first quarter. Illinois also got into the paint with ease, as 10 of its 13 field goals in the quarter came from 2-point range. 42 of the Illini’s 70 points came in the paint.
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It wasn’t until the third quarter that Mizzou found a stellar shooting groove. Slaughter, who’d gone just 1-of-6 from the field in the first half, scored eight points in the third quarter. The Tigers shot 8-of-15 from the field and 5-of-10 from beyond the arc.
Unfortunately for them, they couldn’t rekindle the hot shooting throughout the entirety of the final frame.
Mizzou was its own worst enemy on Wednesday, committing 18 turnovers (Harper called it “the most disappointing stat on here” along with the 3-of-16 shooting mark in the first quarter). Those two problem areas cost MU what could’ve been a fantastic victory over a stellar Illinois squad.
Moral victories can be hard to extract in games like these, but Mizzou fought back against the previously 8-1 Illini that made it to the Round of 32 last season and had blowout wins over Florida State and Indiana this season.
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“In terms of grading their toughness, that was probably a pretty good outing for us to be able to withstand some gut-punches. Metaphorically, I mean,” Harper said. “To be able to bounce back, I think that shows a lot of toughness.”
Slaughter finished with 19 points and a game-high 10 rebounds. Lisa Thompson shot a perfect 5-of-5 from the field, scoring 11 points. Sotell finished with a career-high nine rebounds. The Tigers were plus-two in rebounds against a team that hadn’t lost a rebound battle in each of its previous nine games. They also got Berry Wallace, Illinois’s leading scorer, into early foul trouble, and she only scored eight points in 25 minutes.
Next up for Mizzou is 4-6 Saint Louis at Chaifetz Arena on Sunday. The Tigers lost to the Billikens in their last trip to The Lou two seasons ago.
“We’re going to be their Super Bowl,” Harper said. “As tough as we played and as close as we were (tonight), we still do not have the ability to walk in the gym and get a win because we walked in. It’s not happening.”
