An emotional game elicited an emotional, honest-as-they-come response from Kellie Harper.
The Missouri women’s basketball coach had just watched her team lose 70-62 against Illinois on Wednesday night at Mizzou Arena. There was, naturally, disappointment. She doesn’t want to settle and she said as much when she arrived in the press room to talk about the game.
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But, there are layers in this loss. Disappointment is barely half the story.
Mizzou, truth be told, had no business being competitive with a tough-as-nails Illinois team that forced a backbreaking 18 turnovers out of the Tigers on the night. The Tigers started with 12 straight misses from the field and took five minutes to register a point.
And, yet … Missouri (9-3) had Illinois (9-1) at arm’s length, forcing the talented visitors to close out a two-point game with 90 seconds to play.
The Mizzou Arena bleachers bounced and rattled underneath the weight of a galvanized crowd that hasn’t bounced or rattled in a handful of years.
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There were two minutes to go in the Tigers’ Braggin’ Rights game against Illinois. Harper had just dropped to the floor and fought to trigger an officiating review for a tipped ball that went out of bounds. She got the call. Grace Slaughter fought off double-teams for her fourth double-double of the year. Shooting guard Chloe Sotell had nine individual rebounds in a mammoth effort on the boards.
Mizzou fought, and the size of the fight seemed to outweigh the dismay of defeat.
“I’m disappointed for our players, because they gave themselves a chance to win, and because of that, I’m sitting up here extremely proud of them,” Harper said. … “We’re never going to settle. We’re never going to say ‘it’s OK.’ But there’s a lot that I’m really encouraged about, and there’s a lot that I’m excited about. There’s still a lot of growth that we can have. But they competed, and we had a chance to win the game.
“ … We’ll make sure that we learn from this, we grow from this, but this team — they need to walk around with their shoulders back a little bit, chest up and (be) proud, really, of the growth and the effort that they were able to get today.”
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The Tigers should have been down and out.
The Tigers gave up 15 turnovers in three quarters and shouldered an 0-of-12 shooting start from the field. They had no business being competitive in the final frame against an Illinois squad ranked among the top 40 of the Women’s NET standings.
But they were.
Harper, before a competitive minute had been played this season, challenged her team’s fight. Mizzou lost to Division-II Maryville in an October exhibition, and you would have been forgiven for thinking this season was trending toward a mulligan, a just-get-through-it rebuild through the coaching change and major roster turnover.
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On Dec. 10, about three weeks into SEC play, the sights and sounds are galaxies apart in Columbia, Missouri.
A win Wednesday against the Illini would have been a major boost for the Tigers’ résumé, but the resolve shown in the loss doesn’t detract from what’s becoming increasingly apparent.
The Tigers, now 9-3 on the season, are going to be much more competitive than we once thought. There aren’t moral victories, any coach will tell you, but there also aren’t any more questions about competitiveness now.
“I would just take away our ability to fight back,” Slaughter said. “We got down in the first quarter, and just being able to get stops and come back out, you know, make it a two-point game, I think that was really big for us. Just to never give up and get one stop at a time.”
Oct. 15, 2025; Birmingham, Alabama; Missouri Tigers head coach Kellie Harper talks with the media during SEC Media Days at Grand Bohemian Hotel.
This Mizzou team’s strengths — and the never-say-die demeanor — are worth keeping an eye on. Mizzou guard Shannon Dowell praised Harper for the in-game grit through fiery-eyed pep talks; the kind that make you “want to run through the wall.”
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Missouri, at times, looked airtight in man defense. Illinois, before the Tigers had to play the foul game late, could not get to the line in a physical. The Tigers kept themselves in the game with a 5-of-6 streak from behind the arc in the third quarter.
Perhaps above all else, the Tigers outrebounded an Illinois team that’s about as physical as they come.
That kind of effort will keep Mizzou around in a lot of games it enters as underdogs.
“I think, just, wanting it. Like wanting to win,” Dowell said. “I think this team really does want to win.”
More: Missouri women’s basketball drops tough test to Illinois
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“We have been competitive, and I think that’s where we see the belief,” Harper said. “And when we’re asking them to do something, I’m telling you, they were really trying to do it. We didn’t always execute what the call was. We didn’t always execute the defensive coverage, but they’re really trying, because they really do believe.”
There are mistakes to clean up.
The turnovers ultimately were the difference. Slaughter had six giveaways, which just can’t happen. They coughed up the ball 18 times and Illinois turned that into a nine-point advantage, which was the difference, plus one, in the scoreline.
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The Illini, as expected, were dominant offensively in the paint against a Tigers team that lacks size. Mizzou looked rigid in the first quarter on offense and that could have gotten out of hand.
But the Tigers are showing toughness, a quality Harper questioned as recently as six weeks ago. None of that on Wednesday, as the signs of progress showed up again.
“We’ll keep building on that,” Harper said. “That’s a good sign.”
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Positives outweigh negatives in Missouri women’s hoops loss to Illinois
