COLUMBIA, Mo. - As the Missouri's women's basketball team travels tonight to Starkville, Miss., to face the No. 6 Mississippi State Bulldogs, the Tigers find themselves in a familiar position.
This year's team (18-7, 7-4 Southeastern Conference) is 1-7 all-time against Vic Schaefer's Bulldogs (22-1, 10-0) and has never won at Humphrey Coliseum. They'll have a chance at 8 p.m. on SEC Network.
Missouri's one win in the series came in Columbia in 2016, a 66-54 victory against a Mississippi State team also ranked sixth, though dominant center Teaira McCowan was not yet a starter for the Bulldogs. The Tigers also had a chance last season at home, losing 57-52 to the then-No. 2 team in the nation.
Mississippi State had its three main scorers account for 52 points in that game, but Victoria Vivians now is playing for the WNBA's Indiana Fever and Blair Schaefer is pursuing a career in television journalism. McCowan, a senior is the Bulldogs' only returning player who scored more than three points in last year's matchup.
McCowan will obviously be the focal point for the Tigers tonight, but it's not like she's all Mississippi State has this year. Schaefer's team has won 26 straight SEC games dating back to March 2017, and Texas A&M graduate transfer Anriel Howard and seniors Jordan Danberry and Jazzmun Holmes, one of the conference's best passing point guards, help make up the second-best scoring offense in the country.
But things all start for the Bulldogs inside with McCowan, who is averaging 17.2 points and 13.7 rebounds per game, and has bumped that up to 20.5 points and 15 rebounds averaged out in her last four games.
The only teams to successfully contain the 6-foot-7 McCowan this season are Oregon and Florida. The Gators sold out on stopping McCowan, and though she only recorded two points, six rebounds and four personal fouls in 24 minutes, Mississippi State smashed Florida 90-42. The Ducks held McCowan to five points and 11 rebounds in 34 minutes in Eugene, and have been the only team to beat the Bulldogs so far this season, winning 82-74.
Howard has been the problem for every other team trying to knock off Mississippi State. She poured in a season-high 30 points against Oregon in 39 minutes before fouling out, and is every bit as polished a scorer and rebounder as McCowan, and the two are often on the floor together.
Missouri, in order to notch another away SEC arena off the list of places head coach Robin Pingeton has won, needs to accomplish several things to fulfill that goal.
First is defense. The Bulldogs are scoring 88.3 points per game to Missouri's 64.4. The Tigers cannot hope to win an up-tempo game, and haven't really tried to all season, which is one reason they have held 22 of 24 opponents to fewer than 65 points per game. Cutting 20 points off of Mississippi State's season average is a huge task, especially for a team that has scored more than 100 points six times this season and has a season-low of 65, which came Feb. 3 at Alabama.
A huge part of that is rebounding, as doing so effectively limits the Bulldogs' second-chance scoring, where they are deadly, and lets Missouri set the tempo. It is possible to out-rebound Mississippi State, though very difficult. The team leads the SEC in both offensive rebounding, at an incredible 18 per game, and are plus-15 on average on the glass. The Tigers have personnel capable of boxing out McCowan, but it will take a true team effort to secure their opponent's misses the first time.
The counter to all this that does not work in Missouri's favor is the Bulldogs have a defense on par with the Tigers in scoring average against. The second factor the team needs in this game is for someone other than Sophie Cunningham, the reigning SEC Player of the Week, to step up. Cunningham is averaging 18.5 points in four career games against Mississippi State and has been the team's leading scorer in each case. If other players, like Lauren Aldridge, Amber Smith, Jordan Roundtree and Jordan Chavis can take some of the perimeter heat off Cunningham and hit 3s to open up the defense, they can keep this one within reach and give themselves a chance at a big, NCAA seed-earning upset.