COLUMBIA - Robin Pingeton likened Lianna Doty's defensive play to a gnat.
Sophie Cunningham laughed and nodded in agreement of her 5-foot-7 redshirt senior guard teammate.
"Very, very accurate," Cunningham said. "I even get frustrated sometimes when she's playing on me I'm like, 'No, Doty get away.' But she's very good, she's very little so the balls down at her level so she can get the balls right off the bat."
Tonight, Missouri and Doty will look to slow down a Florida offense scoring 72.9 points per game, fourth in the SEC. Doty will be tasked with disrupting the Gators' flow.
"I love defense so really being a lockdown defender defensively and just doing the little things," Doty said. "A lot of it for us is just getting our offense flowing and going in transition and having an opportunity to push in transition when we can. But really having the opportunity to be a leader and just understanding who we want with the ball and when we want them with the ball and understanding a great shot versus a good shot."
She might not be putting up the scoring numbers but Pingeton knows the importance she has bringing the ball up court.
"She's really doing a great job of getting us in our offensive flow," Pingeton said, "she's just been really steady for us. She's a kid that's been challenged with injuries over the years but she's second all-time leader in assists in this program, maybe knocking on the door to surpass that."
Doty has 463 career assists, third all-time at Missouri to Kerensa Barr's 489 and Amy Fordham's 470. Both are in reach this season.
"I haven't really thought about that much yet," Doty said, "but I think it's first off a testament to I've had incredible players to play with so looking back through the years having the opportunity to play a lot of minutes and play with a lot of great players and also playing for coaches that really believed in what I was doing. It really means nothing right now, what will be remembered is what this team does this year."
A foot injury almost made that mark impossible to reach.
After finishing as an All-SEC Freshman Team selection and then starting all 31 games as a sophomore, Doty missed her junior season with the injury. Despite only starting one game the season she returned, Doty was not worried about possibly getting lost in the shuffle.
"It was an injury where that a lot of doctors were hesitant on whether or not I would be able to get back to where I was or even back to the court really," Doty said. "I was more worried about if I was going to play again."
Doty hasn't given much thought about her Missouri career winding down. But she has reflected on how much Missouri has changed since she arrived in 2012-13. In that time, Missouri has accomplished five straight winning seasons for the first time since 1985-90.
"Golly, yeah that's something that's really awesome to be a part of," Doty said. "The first year I got here, just the culture and the winning mentality every day mentality a dominating mentality the way we walk in the gym is totally different than back then."
III
Pingeton ripped up the paper that outlined her team's NCAA Tournament goals at a team meeting.
She wanted to give her team a reminder of the team's big picture goals. Then she told them the Tigers (17-9, 7-5 Southeastern Conference) their biggest focus is to take it one day at a time.
"It's an elephant in the room, we have to talk about that we all know what our goal is and what our end goal is," Cierra Porter said. "But I think the whole ripping up thing is symbolic of practicing what we preach, taking it one game at a time, one practice at a time."
And today Missouri plays at Florida (13-12, 4-8 SEC) at 6 p.m.
Ronni Williams' 18.9 points per game clip leads the SEC, and she is shooting 54.6 percent from the field. She also leads the Gators with 7.8 rebounds per game.