Scouting Mizzou: 10 Facts, Stats and Other Useless Information

Your University of Kentucky Wildcats are 2-0 in the SEC, but it's been far from an easy start to the second half of the season. UK needed three overtimes to win its first two games of 2015 and a third opponent, Missouri, awaits tomorrow night in Rupp Arena. Will the Cats continue to disappoint by playing down to the level of the opposition? Or will they return to early season form and send the Tigers home with a blowout? We won't know until the ball is tipped, but you can learn a thing or two about Mizzou while you wait in this week's scouting report...   1.) Missouri lost at Auburn over the weekend, sits at 1-1 in SEC play. The Tigers hope to avoid back-to-back conference losses after suffering a 85-79 defeat at Auburn on Saturday. Starting point guard Keith Shamburger scored a season-best 21 points with five threes in the game, but the home Tigers were too much for the away Tigers. Missouri opened up SEC play with an overtime win against LSU. 2.) Johnathan Williams III is Mizzou's star player. Williams, a 6-foot-9 sophomore, ranks 13th in the conference in scoring at 13.7 points per game. He also leads Missouri in rebounding with seven boards per contest. Fun Fact: His dad and grandfather share the same name. 3.) They connect on 36.1 percent of their three-point attempts. Because the only way to beat Kentucky in Rupp is to get unconscious from outside, you should know Mizzou ranks 97th in the country at 36.1 percent from downtown. That's good enough for fourth in the SEC in percentage and in threes made with 103 on 285 attempts. Mizzou reached double digits in triples in two games this season. Let's hope they don't do it a third time tomorrow night. 4.) Devin Booker's dad led Mizzou to the 1994 NCAA Elite Eight. The 1993-94 Tigers earned a one-seed in the NCAA tournament, the same year Melvin Booker was named Big Eight Player of the Year. Booker, the father of Devin Booker, also earned First Team All-American honors. He shot 41 percent from three-point range as a senior, leading Mizzou to a 14-0 conference record. If you were to look up the school's all-time rankings, the elder Booker is top ten in both assists and scoring. 5.) Deuce Bello plays for Missouri. Though he averages only 10 minutes per game, it's worth noting Deuce Bello is a Tiger. Because I had no idea until right now. Bello began his college career at Baylor with his best friend, Quincy Miller, then transferred to Mizzou after his sophomore season in 2012-13. You may remember him as that guy who could jump out of the gym from the 2011 class. Kentucky showed some interest but never pushed too hard because nothing mattered once Cal landed Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Anthony Davis. 6.) Montaque Gill-Caesar is on the roster, too. Another former UK target, Teki Gill-Caesar, also suits up for the Tigers. Gill-Caesar is in his first season in Columbia after a very late reclassification to the 2014 class. The Huntington Prep star waited until last fall to announce he will leave high school early to join Missouri in college basketball. It was only last spring when he was being considered as a potential replacement for the Harrison twins in the Kentucky backcourt, until the Harrisons announced their return for another year. Gill-Caesar started the first 13 games this season as a true freshman but will not play tomorrow night due to a back injury suffered on January 3 against Lipscomb. He is the team's second-leading scorer. 7.) Head coach Kim Anderson looked like this in the NBA: Anderson, a former star at Mizzou, played 21 games for the Portland Trailblazers in the NBA before leaving the game of basketball to pursue a career in porn. (Some of that is true. Maybe all of it.) 8.) Rob Fulford is an assistant coach. Fulford coached Andrew Wiggins and several other elite high school prospects at Huntington Prep in West Virginia. I suppose it's a coincidence he was added to Kim Anderson's staff a little over a month before Teki Gill-Caesar left Huntington early to play at Mizzou. 9.) Tim Fuller, a former Louisville assistant, is also on Anderson's staff. Rick Pitino pulled "Prime Time Tim" away from his job at Nike in 2010 to compete for recruits with Kentucky. "I know we have a great school down the street, but they're not going to beat us on guys," Fuller said, the day he was introduced in Louisville. Fuller left Louisville after one season to join Frank Haith at Missouri. 10.) Kentucky has never lost to Missouri. The two sides have met six times throughout history with the Cats walking away victorious every time. UK needed overtime to win the last meeting in Rupp Arena, a 90-83 thriller with College Gameday in town in 2013. Tomorrow's win will be Kentucky's seventh in the series. Cats.