Hey, guess what?
It’s time to start talking basketball. Well, it’s never NOT been time to talk about basketball, because that time is all the time for me. But we are getting closer to the basketball season, and I’ve already started prepping for the SEC Conference Previews. That means it’s also time to look at the non-conference schedule.
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The Full Non-Conference Schedule:
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October 24th — vs. Kansas State (exhibition)
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November 3rd — at Howard Bison | Preview
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November 7th — vs. Southeast Missouri | Preview
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November 12th — vs Minnesota | Preview
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November 17th — vs Prairie View A&M
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November 20th — vs South Dakota
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November 25th — vs South Carolina State
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November 28th — vs Cleveland State
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December 2nd — at Notre Dame
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December 7th — vs Kansas (in Kansas City, MO)
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December 11th — vs Alabama State
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December 14th — vs Bethune-Cookman
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December 22nd — vs Illinois (in St. Louis, MO)
These previews aren’t here to re-hash the argument over whether Dennis Gates put together a good schedule or not. It’s simply to talk about the opponents, and what can be expected. We’re also not going to use these to preview Kansas State since it’s an exhibition. We’ll do a quick K-State preview before the game, but for now we’re going to focus on the games that matter.
Let’s Meet: Prairie View A&M Panthers
If you’re looking for an exciting event on the evening of November 17th, you might want to skip the home game Mizzou men’s basketball plays that night against Prairie View A&M. Last year Missouri played two teams rated 360th or worse and the closer of those two contests ended up with the Tigers winning by 49 points. That 49 point win was against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, a 6-25 team who beat 4 division one teams last year and Prairie View A&M was one of them.
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The Panthers didn’t have the luxury of playing two non-D1 teams, they only played one and also won four games against D1 teams for a grand total of 5 wins and 27 losses. They finished last season 357th in KenPom, 4-14 in the SWAC, and spent the entire non-conference schedule playing buy games against bigger schools and losing by a lot. It’s a tough job, but it’s how schools like PAMU pay the bills.
Not many SWAC teams can tout national championships, but the Panthers of Prairie View, Texas — a small town barely holding onto the greater Houston metro area — won the 1962 NAIA championship. 15 years later, in 1977, they joined Division 1 basketball and the SWAC. Overall it’s a been a bit of a bumpy road, but they do have a couple NCAA Tournament appearances to show for it. Once in 1998, when they lost to KU, and again in 2019 when they lost to Fairleigh Dickinson in the first four.
The man who led the Panthers to that second ever trip, is still in charge today.
Head Coach | Byron Smith | 10th Season 128-161
Thankless job… blah blah blah. There are hard jobs, and then there are SWAC jobs. It’s one of the reasons why I think you can’t measure the quality of a coach strictly through wins and losses. Byron Smith’s best season, 2019, started with his team going 1-11. They would then finish 22-13, winning 21 of 22 games is pretty impressive no matter what league you’re in.
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Having a good season in Prairie View is finishing the season under 300 in KenPom. Smith has done that 6 times in 9 seasons. His first year was tough, and the last two have followed suit. But Smith has shown he can do the job well. He won the league in the COVID year with no NCAA Tournament, when the conference tournament was cancelled after just one game. Then the next year, in a shortened playing season, the Panthers went undefeated in conference play but lost in the conference tournament.
That three year stretch was the best in school history, so you can see that the administration will continue to support Smith for as long as he wants to be there.
Series History | Missouri leads 2-0
An extensive history to be sure, only two meetings between these two schools. There was the 1991 meeting, when Missouri was ineligible for post-season play but ran out a squad featuring future NBA players Doug Smith, Anthony Peeler, and Melvin Booker, along with future All Big 8 Jevon Crudup… the squad was very good and they beat Prairie View badly. By 52 points. It was the 11th largest victory in Mizzou history.
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Then the Panthers returned to Mizzou Arena in 2008. If your memory is reliable the 2008-09 team and season was a pretty good one. Missouri opened the season against Prairie View and won by 21 in a pretty easy contest. That PAMU squad was a good one, in relative terms. Leo Lyons led the team in scoring with 21, DeMarre Carroll chipped in 19, and Marcus Denmon had 15.
What about the team now?
A school like Prairie View is best viewed as a destination for high major cast-offs, and mid-major role players looking for a bigger share of the pie. You can build pretty good teams just feasting off the ends of roster from schools in better leagues.
That’s why the Panthers will feature transfers from UTSA, Utah Valley, Western Michigan, Quinnipiac, and Idaho State this season. Being located near Houston also means you can draw some players back closer to home.
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Tai’Reon Joseph averaged nearly 9 points per game at UTSA, and now he’ll be closer to home in Baton Rouge for his final season, he scored almost 19 points per game for Southern the season before. Cory Wells is a Texas native who spent some time at D2 schools before trying his hand at Utah Valley. Seryee Lewis is a well travelled Chicago native who last saw limited action at Western Michigan, before that he was at Keiser in Florida, an NAIA school, and prior to that he was a Rice Owl, and even before that he played at Kansas State.
Then there’s Doug Young, a Houston native who spent two years at Midland College (a JUCO) before being a role player at Quinnipiac. Then there’s Joey Madimba, another Texas native from Mansfield, who’s spent time at Tarleton State, Howard College (a JUCO), and Idaho State.
This is a sampling, but you get the idea. You’ve got to assemble a roster. The portal is a place where you can find all sorts of misfits.
Not enough misfits to make this a game Missouri will lose, however. Prairie View has played 60 non-conference games against D1 opponents in the last 6 seasons, they’ve won 8 times. Three games were on neutral sites, one was a home game — the Pac-12’s great idea of playing road games against the SWAC went well — which means they’re 4-48 on the road. 14 of those were under 10 points… so if you’re not paying attention they can sneak up on you. But 21 games ended in a 20 point loss or greater. Gates usually has his guys ready to go for these kinds of games.
