COLUMBIA - By all accounts, this season was a breakthrough for Missouri women's basketball.
The 25th-ranked Tigers (21-10, 11-5 Southeastern Conference) finished third in the SEC, their highest finish since joining the conference five seasons ago. The team placed well with conference honors, with Robin Pingeton winning SEC Coach of the Year, Sophie Cunningham being named All-SEC First-Team and Amber Smith winning co-SEC Freshman of the Year.
But now it's win or go home for them, starting at 4:15 p.m. today against South Florida (24-8, 11-5 American Athletic Conference) in Tallahassee, Fla for the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers earned a No. 6 seed in the Stockton, Calif., region, while the Bulls are an 11-seed.
Pingeton, however, knows seeding does not guarantee anything.
"This time of the year when you're in the NCAA Tournament and you've got 64 teams that are the 64 best teams in the country, it doesn't matter what your seeding is," Pingeton said. "You better bring it and you better bring it for 40 minutes."
Luckily for most of the Tigers, this isn't their first go-round in the NCAA Tournament. And they learned last season the lower-seeded team can get a first-round win.
Missouri made the tournament last season for the first time since 2004-05 as a 10-seed and beat seventh-seeded BYU 78-69 for the Tigers' first tournament win since 2001. Missouri would go on to lose to Texas 73-55 in the second round.
Now the Tigers are looking to avoid being the higher seed to go home in the first round.
"Just learned that you lose you go home, so every play, every possession matters," Cunningham said of the team's experience last season. "And I mean that's kind of like all year, but right now you're done with the season and we're done playing with those seniors and for me playing with my sister. So that's hard to comprehend sometimes but if we go out and give it our best shot, no matter what we're going to be happy at the end of the day."
Cunningham admitted after the team found out Monday they were playing the Bulls she knew very little about them. Pingeton wasn't too familiar with them either, but went to work watching film shortly after the Tigers drew them.
"I know that coach (Jose Fernandez) has done a great job down there and he's got a great tradition," Pingeton said Monday. "They've won at a high level and have a lot of history there."
South Florida went to the AAC Championship game before being the 107th consecutive game to lose to No. 1 Connecticut in a 100-44 game.
Kitija Laksa leads the Bulls with a 19.2 points per game clip while shooting 40.5 percent from the field and 39.1 percent from 3. Maria Jespersen (14.8) and Ariadna Pujol (12.2) also average double-figure scoring for South Florida. Jespersen leads the Bulls in rebounding with 8.8 per game, followed by Tamara Henshaw's seven rebounds per game.
As a team, South Florida averages 70.9 points per game, while shooting 43.3 percent from the field and 33.2 percent from 3.
"We better handle it or we'll be one-and-done," Pingeton said. "We're coming off a little bit of a bitter taste in our mouth from the conference tournament our team's been really good all year long about not having empty losses, and I think they're all aware of its win and advance, lose and go home so just what that feels like and what it looks like."
The bitter taste Pingeton alluded to was Missouri's 62-48 loss to Texas A&M in the Tigers' lone SEC Tournament game.
Missouri attempted 24 3s in that game and only made six. The Tigers started with an 11-2 lead against the Aggies and led 27-24 at halftime. A four-point third quarter for the Tigers helped Texas A&M cement a lead. Cierra Porter shot two free throws in the loss, the only two the Tigers as a team would shoot.
Two weeks later, the Tigers have a chance to get that bitter taste out of their mouths. If not, they might be stuck with one for the rest of the offseason.
"We talk about all the time at the end of a game as long as we played to our standard it doesn't matter what the scoreboard says," Lindsey Cunningham said, "and we weren't too happy with the way that tournament game ended and luckily it's not the way our season ended. We just want to make sure when our season does come to an end we feel really good about the game we played."