Missouri basketball looks to prove itself in NCAAs

The Tigers play No. 14 Cornell in the first round Friday.

By Evan Glantz

Published March 17, 2009

Coming into the season, Big 12 coaches predicted the order in which their conference would finish. Coming in at seventh was the Missouri Tigers. Twenty-eight wins and a Big 12 championship later, the men's basketball team locked up the No. 3 seed in the West Region of the NCAA Tournament.

Playing in their first NCAA Tournament since 2003, the Tigers will make the trek to Boise, Idaho, to take on the Cornell Big Red.

"This is a tremendous opportunity to say that Missouri is in the NCAA, and to have a No. 3 seed on top of that and to have an opportunity to go and play Cornell in Boise, Idaho," coach Mike Anderson said. "If you asked these guys what were their goals at the beginning of the year, they would probably have said to win a National Championship. Well the only way you're going to have a chance to do that is to be in the tournament."

Both Anderson and his players admit not to know much about the Ivy League champions, but do not see that as a problem.

"That's the beauty of the NCAA Tournament," Anderson said. "You're going to get a lot of teams that are not familiar with one another. We're not as familiar with them at this point in time. But we will get familiar with them."

Missouri will also be paying close attention to the other teams in the West, most notably the Connecticut Huskies and Memphis Tigers, the No. 1 and 2 seeds respectively.

Should Missouri win in the opening round, it would take on the winner of No. 6 Marquette and No. 11 Utah State match. If the Tigers make it to the Sweet 16 in Glendale, Ariz., logic points to a battle with Memphis. But a game against No. 7 California or No. 10 Maryland is not completely out of the picture. Anything can happen in the madness of March.

There are some pundits not yet convinced of the Tigers' potential. During the Selection Special on CBS, analyst Seth Davis said he did not see "a lot of competition for the top two seeds." And on the Sports Illustrated Web site, he labeled them as the "overrated" team in the West. Although the Tigers do not mind the disrespect, it does put a chip on their shoulder come Friday.

"It doesn't really surprise me," junior guard Zaire Taylor said. "We hear things like that all the time. It's all speculation and they have a right to their opinion. They're just doing their job."

Anderson expressed a similar point of view, but tried to downplay the comments.

"Everyone is going to have opinions about our basketball team as well as other basketball teams," Anderson said. "They have people that they like, they've probably seen them more than they've seen us. But I like our basketball team, and I certainly like our team in a tournament format."

The road to the Final Four in Detroit begins in Boise at 2 p.m. Friday. The West Region will provide Missouri with some tough challenges, but the team has dealt with that all season.

"It's been our attitude all year," junior guard J.T. Tiller said. "We used the low expectations that everybody had for us as motivation to fuel our fire to farther than what we were expected to do."