That trip to Missouri looks like a difficult test after last night's Mizzou-Illinois result

Unlike snow plowers and meteorologists and sports bloggers, Kentucky Basketball has the weekend off for the holiday so the team can be at home with their families. Kentucky’s coaches and players are currently scattered across the country for quality time with loved ones and Christmas cheer, and soon the team will reconvene in Lexington to begin the Southeastern Conference portion of the schedule, plus that New Year’s Eve party with Louisville a week from tomorrow.

But before the Cats play the highly-anticipated rivalry game in Rupp Arena on December 31, there is a trip to Missouri tucked between Christmas and 2023 on the mid-week schedule. Next Wednesday, December 28, Kentucky will open league play in CoMo against Mizzou in the first SEC road game of the season.

And if you followed last night’s scores around college basketball, you’re probably aware of the challenge ahead in playing first-year head coach Dennis Gates’ unranked Tigers because Missouri beat No. 16 Illinois, 93-71, in the annual Braggin Rights’ Game in St. Louis.

The lopsided win pushed Missouri to 11-1 on the season and afterward, Gates–who replaced Cuonzo Martin after Gates’ three seasons at Cleveland State–expressed disappointment in his team’s performance in the 93-point effort.

“We didn’t play well,” he said at the postgame podium. “I’m dead serious. I don’t think we played well and I will continue to challenge my guys on executing things we need to execute for a full 40 minutes. We did not play well and I will continue to say that. We’re obviously excited about the direction we are going, but there are small things that you may not see with the naked eye, that I see, that we did not execute in a great way and I will continue to challenge our guys.”

With my naked eye, I saw the Tigers gain control of the game early with a 15-0 first-half run against the Fighting Illini. Naked eyes also saw Missouri up by as many as 35 points during the second half, powered by a 60-percent shooting effort from the field and a 50-percent clip from 3-point range.

Kobe Brown, an All-SEC guard/forward a year ago, saw 10 of his 15 shots and all eight of his free throws go in for a career-high 31 points in the victory. Brown had eight assists, five rebounds, and four steals too.

Helping him out in scoring, D’Moi Hodge and Dean Gholston added 20 and 15 points apiece. Hodge hit four 3-pointers in the game while Gholston did his work off the bench in only 24 minutes until he fouled out.

Defensively, Missouri’s ball pressure forced Illinois into 17 turnovers with only 10 assists, and an active zone defense got Illinois’ shooters out of sync around the perimeter where only seven of Illinois’ 31 outside shots found their mark. Mizzou scored 33 points off of those 17 turnovers, 13 of which were steals, and forced Illinois into a long scoring drought early in the game that created separation Illinois never recovered from. The Illini went six-and-a-half minutes without a point and almost nine minutes without a field goal.

So, if you were counting Kentucky’s SEC opener as a victory when you played out the schedule in your head earlier in the season, you may want to rethink the difficulty in playing a very good Mizzou team. The Tigers have one loss this season to fourth-ranked Kansas (albeit, in a blowout).

Lookinh ahead, KenPom currently gives Kentucky a three-point edge in its forecast of the Cats’ SEC opener at Mizzou Arena.

The game tips off Wednesday night at 7 PM on the SEC Network.

#BeatMizzou because the Cats need a good win on the resume and some positive vibes moving forward in conference play.