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Nov. 27, 2003
Tip-off: 5 p.m. CST (6 p.m. EST)
Arena: Athletics Center O'Rena (4,000)
TV: Mizzou Sports Network. Dan McLaughlin, play-by-play: Norm Stewart, analyst
Radio: Tiger Radio Network. Tom Ackerman, play-by-play, Gary Link, analyst
Rankings: Mizzou was ranked 5th in the latest AP Poll and 6th in the latest ESPN/USA Today Poll. Oakland is not ranked
Series: First meeting
Coaches:
Missouri: Quin Snyder (Duke '89) 84-49 at MU and overall (5th season). Snyder and the Tigers have never faced Oakland
Oakland: Greg Kampe (Bowling Green '78) 325-222 at Oakland and overall (20th season). Kampe and the Golden Grizzlies have never faced Mizzou.
Tigers Open Highly-Anticipated 2003-04 Campaign In Motor City\
The University of Missouri Basketball squad opens what has been one of the most highly anticipated seasons in school history on Saturday when they travel to Rochester Hills, MI, (a suburb of Detroit) to take on the Oakland University Golden Grizzlies. Seniors Arthur Johnson, Rickey Paulding, Travon Bryant and Josh Kroenke lead the Tigers, who are currently ranked fifth in the latest Associated Press Poll and sixth in the latest ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll, into battle against the 2-3 Golden Grizzlies.
Saturday's contest will mark the first time the Tigers have opened their season away from the Hearnes Center since Coach Quin Snyder's first season at Mizzou, 1999-2000, when Mizzou played Wisconsin in Syracuse, New York. The game is set for tip-off at 5 p.m. CST (6 p.m EST) and will air on the Mizzou Sports Network with Dan McLaughlin providing play-by-by and former Tiger All-American and legendary Mizzou coach Norm Stewart providing the analysis. The game will also be broadcast on the Tiger Radio Network, which spans over 50 stations across the state of Missouri. Tom Ackerman will call the contest while former Tiger great Gary Link provides the analysis in this his eighth season as part of the Tiger basketball broadcast crew.
Quick Hits
* The Tigers open their campaign on the road for the first time since 1999-2000.
* Mizzou has the latest season opener of any team in the Big 12.
* Missouri is the only school in the conference to return two players from the Big 12 Top 10 scoring list from last season (Rickey Paulding, 4th, 17.4 ppg: Arthur Johnson, 9th, 16.1 ppg).
* Saturday's contest marks the beginning of the 98th season of Mizzou Basketball. The program carries an all-time mark of 1,346-938 (.548).
* Coach Quin Snyder is looking for win number 85 at Mizzou.
* Rickey Paulding was named a preseason All-American by the Associated Press. He is the second Tiger to earn that honor under head coach Quin Snyder (the other being Kareem Rush prior to the 1999-2000 season).
* The Tigers are 42-20 under Coach Snyder against non-conference opponents.
A Look at the Golden Grizzlies
After getting out to a solid 2-0 start, the Golden Grizzlies of Oakland have fallen upon a three-game losing streak. That being said, the losses have not exactly come to cream puffs as they have dropped tough contests at Xavier, at Michigan and at Cincinnati on Monday night. This will be the Griz's first home game at the O'Rena, which seats right around 4,000 folks. OU was picked to win the Mid-Con by the coaches in the conference and has played five games in the last 10 days.
Junior Rawle Marshall has stepped up in a big way for OU, leading them in scoring at 20.6 points per contest. He has shot .467 from the field and totaled nine rebounds, three assists, two blocks and a steal over the last two contests. Senior All-American and Naismith Candidate Mike Helm can also score with the best of them averaging 20.0 ppg. He scored 30 points or more in 14 games last year and is NCAA Division I's leading returning scorer heading into the year. The Grizzlies are coached by Greg Kampe, who is in his 20th season.
Thank You Detroit, We Love You!
Finally ... Rick and AJ ... have come back ... to Detroit!
Seniors Rickey Paulding and Arthur Johnson will be playing in front of several home town fans on Saturday when the lace em' up at the O'Rena. Paulding graduated from Renaissance High School where 25.3 points and 12 rebounds per contest as a senior earning Detroit Public School System player-of-the-year honors. Rick also was an outside hitter and middle blocker for his high school volleyball squad.
Johnson is a product of Pershing High where he was an honor roll student. He averaged 19 points and 14 rebounds his senior campaign earning a spot on the Michigan All-State Dream Team by the Detroit Free Press. This will be the first time the dynamic duo has had a chance to play in their home town after putting together two of the best careers in MU school history.
The Rick is Ready to Rock
Senior Preseason All-American Rickey Paulding is coming off of his finest year as a Tiger in which he averaged a team-high 17.4 points per contest in 2002-03. If the numbers don't lie, and they usually don't, Paulding has a good shot to go down as one of the finest players to ever put on the Missouri uniform if he can continue his unbelievable improvement from year to year. Here's a quick look at how he as progressed over the past three years at Mizzou:
Year FGM/FGA FG% 3ptFG/3pt FGA 3pt FG% Pts/Gm RPG 2000-01 90-214 .421 12-56 .214 7.0 2.4 2001-02 147-288 .510 50-113 .442 11.9 3.9 2002-03 199-442 .450 75-193 .389 17.4 5.5Paulding earned All-Big 12 second-team honors last season and was named to the Big 12 All-Tournament team. He was named to both the Wooden and Naismith Awards this season and also earned a preseason All-American nod from the Associated Press. He ranks 23rd on the all-time Mizzou scoring charts with 1,220 and stands to move into the top five when all is said and done.
Lean, Mean and on the Scene
Since coming to Mizzou at over 300 lbs. his freshman year, senior Preseason Big 12 Player of the Year Arthur Johnson's weight (which is a svelte 255 heading into this season) has went down while his numbers have went up. The explosive big man with feather-soft touch around the basket already owns Mizzou's all-time shot blocking mark with 197 career swats. And if all goes according to plan, he will also become the Tigers all-time leading rebounder right around Feb.2, which just happens to be the Tigers yearly trip to Kansas to face the Jayhawks. He needs just 195 more boards to pass former Tiger great Doug Smith on the chart. He also currently ranks 22nd on the all-time scoring charts with 1,268 points and has a good shot at moving into the top 10 if not the top five on the chart.
Last season, he became only the fourth Tiger since the 1949-50 season to lead the team in rebounding in three straight seasons and can become the first Mizzou player to lead the squad in boards for four straight years if he can be the leader of the pack once again this year. Stay tuned.
#1 at the 1
After taking over the point guard spot midway through the season last year for Mizzou, sophomore Jimmy McKinney (#1 in your program) has made it quite clear that he will do what ever it takes for the Tigers to be successful. The multi-tooled guard whose natural position is more of a shooting guard is capable of impacting a game in any of several ways.
He led Mizzou in scoring in the Tigers second-round upset of Oklahoma State at the Big 12 Tournament with a career-best 16 points. He also led the Tigers in rebounds at home against Nebraska when he pulled down eight boards while flirting a triple double with nine points, eight assists and eight rebounds in the Tiger route of the Huskers.
Putting the Power in Power Forward
Senior Travon Bryant and freshman Linas Kleiza will provide a powerful one-two punch at the power forward position for Mizzou this season.
Bryant has ranked second on the Tiger squad in rebounding in each of the last two seasons. He averaged a career best 8.9 points per game while actually improving his average against the brutal Big 12 with 9.8 ppg. He also pulled down 5.8 boards per contest and rejected a career-best 40 shots (he ranks seventh on the Mizzou all-time blocked shots list with 74 career swats.
Kleiza is a physically imposing specimen for being only a freshman. After a slow start to his Tiger career against Inter Hoop, he recorded his first of what is hoped to be several double-doubles with 10 points and 10 rebounds against the Asheville Altitude last week. He averaged over 29 points per contest at the Junior World Championships last summer and will be counted on as a valuable contributor in the Tigers' plans this year.
Road Warriors
As already stated earlier in this unbelievably random gathering of text, the Tigers are on the road for their season opener for the first time since the 1999-2000 season. Mizzou better get used to living out of their suitcases for the first month or so of the season. Five of the Tigers first seven contests are on the road or at neutral sites including a Dec. 6 trip to Bloomington, IN, to take on Indiana, a trip to Seattle for a might-as-well-be home game for Gonzaga at the Battle of Seattle, the Busch Braggin' Rights game against Illinois in St. Louis and a trip to the Pyramid to face Memphis. With powerhouses like that lined up and waiting for Mizzou, this truly could be a December to remember.
Happy to Be at Home in the Hearnes
Mizzou begins its 31st and final season at the Hearnes Center home when it faces Coppin State on Tuesday. The Tigers have experienced great success at the Hearnes registering a 395-68 (.853) record since the 1972-73 season. Five Tiger squads have gone undefeated in the Hearnes Center and 14 teams have lost one game or fewer including last year's squad last went 14-1 at home. From 1988-90, the Tigers went 31-0 at the Hearnes Center.
Next year, Mizzou will move into a new state-of-the art arena, which will be located just southwest of the Hearnes. The new 15,000-seat building is on schedule for completion on Oct. 1, 2004.
The Conley Countdown
In case Mizzou fans are wondering, and we are guessing that you are, when the Tigers tip off on Saturday night, (6 p.m. EST, 5 p.m. CST) it will be 22 days (or 525 hours or 31,500 minutes or 1,890,000 seconds) until offensive dynamo Jason Conley, a 6-5 swingman who transferred to Mizzou from VMI, will be eligible to compete for the Tigers. As has already been well documented, Conley led the country in scoring as a freshman averaging 29.3 points per contest. He has worked extremely hard since coming to Mizzou to gain weight (up nearly 15 pounds) while also working to become a better defender. The time for Conley will come on December 21st when the Tigers welcome UNC-Greensboro to Mizzou for a 2 p.m. CST contest in Columbia.
A Quick Check of the Polls
While the only poll that truly matters doesn't come out until the second week in April, its never to early to track how the Tigers are doing in the polls.
Date USA Today Coaches Associated Press Poll Preseason #6 #5 * Nov. 23 #6 #5
*The #5 Preseason ranking is the highest Mizzou has been ranked in a preseason poll in school history.
Second Verse, Better Than the First
The Tigers finished the preseason 2-0 with two quality exhibition wins over Inter Hoop (from Lithuania) and the Asheville Altitude (of the National Basketball developmental League.) In the first game, Mizzou was up by only one point at the half and was down by one point at halftime of the second game. However, the second half of Mizzou's two preseason games were horses of a different color as the Tigers were able to average 45.5 points per game in the second stanza while holding their opponents to just under 35.5 points per half.
The second half of the Tigers contest with the Asheville Altitude is a prime example of the turnaround they are capable of putting together. After trailing 30-29 at halftime and shooting only 30.8 percent in the opening half, Mizzou put on a show in the second half scoring 45 points on 15-of-28 shooting (53.6 percent) including 11 points from Jimmy McKinney and nine points from freshman Linas Kleiza.
I Did Not Know That. Did You Know That Ed?
Pardon the tribute to Johnny Carson, but did you know that there have been 16 schools that have participated in each of the last five NCAA Tournaments? Five of the 16 are Big 12 schools - Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas. The other schools are Duke, Maryland, Indiana, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Arizona, Stanford, Kentucky, Cincinnati and Gonzaga.
Saving the Best for Last?
The Tigers have been picked to win the Big 12 Conference title by the conference coaches and have been ranked in the top five by the Associated Press. Since opening the season with Mizzou Madness on Oct. 18 at midnight, the Tigers have played the Black and Gold game on Oct. 25, an exhibition squad called Inter Hoop from Lithuania on Nov. 10, and finally a contest with the Asheville Altitude of the NBDL on Nov. 18. Here's the point ... the Tigers will have practiced for 41 days when they open the regular season in Detroit, Mich., against Oakland. That is the latest opening date of any squad in the Big 12.
In a related note, this is also the latest date a Tiger squad has opened their campaign since the 1981-82 season, a year in which the Tigers went 27-4 overall and 12-2 in the Big Eight (1st place) and also won the Big Eight tournament. Hopefully we see some parallels in March.
Getting Defensive
The Tigers continue to work on becoming a better defensive team. Last year, the Tigers held opponents to only 41 percent, down from 45 percent in 2001-02. Also, the Tigers dropped opponents scoring average from 72.5 point per game in 2001-02 to 67.7 points per contest in 2002-03. With its new-found depth and large amount of experience in 2003-04, look for Mizzou to focus on extending opponents and jumping in passing lanes more frequently in an attempt to get out and run.
Last Time Out ...
Unselfish Tigers Get Five Players in Double Figures as Mizzou Downs Asheville Altitude
Jimmy McKinney registered 15 points, four assists and three steals.
Columbia, Mo. - Five Tigers reached double figures in scoring as the University of Missouri men' basketball squad picked up a 74-60 win of the Asheville Altitude on Monday night at the Hearnes Center. Mizzou finishes the preseason at 2-0.
Mizzou overcame 22 turnovers on the night and a one-point deficit at halftime by out-rebounding the Altitude, 45-32 and shooting a blazing 53.6 (15-of-28) percent in the second half while holding Asheville to only 34 percent shooting in the second half.
After trailing by as many as eight in the first half, the Tigers took their first lead of the contest with a sweet jumper from senior Arthur Johnson with 16:36 left in the second stanza at 34-32. However, Mizzou would fall behind once again, trailing the Altitude 47-46 with 9:10 left in the contest. From that point on, Mizzou would go on a 27-14 run the rest of way keyed by 11 points from sophomore guard Jimmy McKinney during that span.
The talented point guard was outstanding on the night scoring 15 points (including 12-of-12 shooting from the free throw line) while also handing out a team-best four assists and grabbing a team-high three steals. Senior forward Travon Bryant was also outstanding going 5-of-8 from the field for 13 points.
Johnson had 12 points on 4-of-7 shooting while also pulling down seven board (four of which were offensive) while senior Josh Kroenke hit three 3-point baskets and pulled down what would be a career-best eight rebounds (if only exhibition games counted) in a great effort.
Freshman Linas Kleiza showed why he was projected as one of the top recruits in the country coming into the year scoring his first double-double of the year with 10 points on 4-of-8 shooting while pulling down 10 rebounds. Senior Rickey Paulding just missed double digits with nine points after going down early in the second half with a slightly sprained ankle. However, all reports indicate Paulding will be fine for the regular season debut of the No. 5 team in the country, which doesn't come until Nov. 29. Speaking of debuts, freshman walk-on Spencer Laurie played his first game in a Tiger uniform on Tuesday playing nine minutes while recording a steal and a rebound.
Preseason Hype, Prognostications and Items of Interest
Oh, one could say there is a pretty good buzz around the country about the Tigers heading into the 2003-04 season. Below is a listing of the preseason awards and predictions the Tigers of Ol' Mizzou have garnered over the summer:
Team Predictions #3-Lindys #4-Sporting News #5-Dick Vitale's Preseason Sensational 16 #5-Blue Ribbon #7-Athlon #7-Street & Smith's Final Four Qualifier-Lindy's Elite Eight Qualifier-Athlon Best Backcourt in the Country-Sporting News #1 in Lindy's list of Top 10 Frontcourts in the Country #5-Top 25 Recruiting Class for 2003-Athlon #11-Recruting Class in the Country-Lindy'sBig 12 Predictions Big 12 Champions-Blue Ribbon, Lindy's #2 in Big 12-Street & Smith's #1 Recruiting Class in Big 12-Street & Smith's #1 Recruiting Class in Big 12-Sporting News Top Backcourt in Big 12-Blue Ribbon
Head Coach Quin Snyder
With a 2003-2004 team poised to be among the nation's elite, Quin Snyder has proven that success can come quickly with hard work and determination. On the brink of his fifth season as head coach of the Missouri Tigers, Snyder is leading a team that has been ranked as high as number three in the nation in preseason polls. Missouri's 15th head coach, Snyder has enjoyed impressive runs in the NCAA Tournament for four straight years. In fact, the 2002-2003 season was witness to a 22-win campaign that ended with an overtime loss in the NCAA Tournament to eventual Final Four contender, Marquette.
This season, Snyder's squad promises to offer even more excitement, with a powerful returning group, highlighted by the electrifying duo of Rickey Paulding and Arthur Johnson, along with a host of new recruits. Given the excitement Snyder has generated in such a short span of time at the helm, it is not surprising that many people are waiting with anticipation for this season to begin and predicting great things for the Tigers. It is easy to see why expectations are high when you consider all of the following ...
* Missouri returns four starters from last year's team, and in all, returns over 80 percent of its scoring, 98 percent of its blocked shots, and over 90 percent of its rebounding from last season.
* All of last season's impressive junior class, featuring Arthur Johnson, Rickey Paulding, Travon Bryant and Josh Kroenke will be returning for their senior campaign and will join a number of exciting newcomers.
* A fifth straight top-25 recruiting class has been added to the roster this fall.
* Mizzou continues to be a fixture on national and regional television broadcasts. With every game but one on television, Snyder's Tigers continue to create unprecedented exposure for the program.
* The program will be the direct benefactor of a new, state-of-the-art $75 million arena which athletic officials plan to have open in time for the 2004-05 season.
* Snyder signed a contract extension, which will keep him a fixture on the Tiger sidelines through at least the 2005-06 season.
* And while Mizzou's on-court achievements constantly grab the headlines, what takes place in the classroom remains at the top of Snyder's priority list. An academic All-American himself during his playing days at Duke, Snyder is quite proud of the fact that in his four years at MU, seven scholarship players have exhausted their eligibility and all seven have graduated. In addition, this past season saw the men's basketball team achieve the highest GPA in 15 years.