Missouri Tiger Games I Wish I Could Have Seen And DVR’d: Missouri 96, Kansas 94 (2OT)

Let’s face it: off-season blogging for a college team is about as sloggy as slog can get. To fill up time and space until the football season is underway, I present a new series dedicated to Missouri Tiger games I wish I could have either been alive to see or old enough to see, remember, and care about.

I was only four years old in 1997, when Missouri was an otherwise mediocre team hosting an undefeated Kansas Jayhawk squad that was number one in the country. Of course, this being a great rivalry and all, records and rankings were thrown out the window as the Tigers stayed with the Jayhawks for 48 minutes, then for five more minutes, then for another five minutes until a loose ball rolled to Corey Tate, who calmly sank the final go-ahead jumper. I was probably woke up by my parents screaming after that game, but I have no recollection of 1997. Here’s how I’ve pieced it together…

From J. Brady McCollough of the Kansas City Star

"Feb. 4, 1997Corey Tate, of course, was ready. Kansas came to Hearnes with a record of 22-0 and ranked No. 1 in the country. Yet, Missouri took Kansas to double-overtime, and with only seconds left, the Tigers had the ball with a chance to win.Stewart drew up a play that had nothing to do with Tate. But the play went haywire and the ball ended up in Tate’s hands with 7 seconds to play. Tate knew the situation and fired up a shot from 16 feet away. He nailed it with 5.6 seconds left, and Missouri held on and won 96-94 in one of the most shocking upsets of the rivalry.Nobody was more shocked than Stewart.“I don’t think he even knew I was on the floor,” says Tate, now basketball coach at Mineral Area Junior College in Park Hills, Mo. “Coach Stewart didn’t know my name until I hit that shot.”Now, Tate gets to watch the replay of his shot almost every time MU and KU play. Luckily, Mineral Area’s schedule has worked out so that Tate can watch in person today. He says he should be able to scrounge up a ticket in Columbia.“You would think,” he said, laughing."

If there is anything you should ever know about me, it’s that the only thing I love more than a good story (be it in the form of a book, movie, or T.V. show) is an exciting game of basketball. Any type of exciting game works; the comeback, the back-and-forth game, the upset, it all gets me pumped, and if there’s a last-second jump-shot to go with it, then that just makes it better. Being a little guy myself, I always tend to root for the underdogs and laughable losers. It may make for just another cheesy sports movie, but it’s one that has stood the test of time, and it’s one that continues to show up in the real world of sports with stories such as Butler and VCU.

Of course, one would know that the Missouri squad that took down the mighty Jayhawks was actually a laughable loser, not a good time that was underrated by the media and the name on their jersey such as the Rams of Virginia Commonwealth. They would finish the season with a 15-17 record, with their last glimmer of hope coming in the form of an unexpected run to the Big 12 Tournament Championship game before bowing out to (you guessed it) Kansas by 27 points in the championship game. It was a not-so-spectacular team that somehow managed to beat one of the nation’s best teams with what could only be possible through harnessing the energy of Norm Stewart’s hatred of Kansas and the raucous crowd at the Hearnes Center and unleashing all of that manic energy onto those hated players in crimson and blue. Bill C. at Rock M Nation used Statsheet.com to re-create the moments leading up to Corey Tate’s shot:

"Mizzou didn’t beat Kansas because the Jayhawks played terribly, or because Mizzou was ridiculously overachieving in any one area of the game.  This game was incredibly even in just about every category — both teams shot relatively well from 3-point land, the rebounds were dead even, and Mizzou actually turned the ball over more.  Plus, Kansas’ stars played like stars.  Vaughn (48 minutes, 19 points on 5-for-12 shooting, 10 assists, 3 turnovers) basically pantsed Ray (48 minutes, 3 points on 1-for-3 shooting, 2 assists, 4 turnovers), and LaFrentz (47 minutes, 26 points on 10-for-22 shooting, 16 rebounds) battled Kelly Thames (46 minutes, 24 points on 7-for-16 shooting, 11 rebounds) to a near-draw.But there was Buck Grimm, making four of eight 3-point attempts, and there was Sutherland, making three more with ever-increasing degree of difficulty.  There was Tyron Lee, battling Billy Thomas to a near-draw off the bench.And there was Mizzou, making every overtime free throw after failing to put the game away from the stripe late in regulation. (Grimm, who shot 79.4% from the line in 1996-97, missed two of four free throws in the final 26 seconds — Sutherland faltered as well — and Mizzou led by only three when Vaughn was fouled with 13 seconds left. Vaughn missed the second free throw, but LaFrentz threw Grimm to the ground maneuvered around Grimm for the rebound and putback, sending the game to overtime after Dibi Ray missed a runner at the buzzer.)Thanks to Norm and the Hearnes Center crowd [Called it! – Ed.], a Mizzou team that had recently lost eight of 11 games, actually believed they could hang with the 22-0 Jayhawks.  And with the ball bouncing free late in the second overtime, it wasn’t Vaughn, or Haase, or Pierce (long fouled out), or LaFrentz, or Thomas, or Ryan Robertson snatching it up … it was injury-prone tweener Corey Tate."

Hard to believe I could have actually watched this game at the age of four, only to have no memory of it in the present day. Damn the reptilian brain.

I will experience my very first live Missouri – Kansas basketball game next year, and I couldn’t be more excited. The stakes will surely be higher than they were last year, and it will be set up (the final home KU game for a bunch of seniors that want to taste victory against the ‘Hawks like they did as freshmen back in 2009) in a way that if this was a movie, Missouri would win ten times out of ten. Of course, with me typing as if I’m so sure that Missouri will beat Kansas when I see them clash live and in person for the very first time I’m all but guaranteeing that Kansas will win yet another game outright in Columbia as they have in the last two years (and let’s not go back to last season’s game. That was painful to watch and then more painful when CBS refused to switch back to the game when MU was mounting one last attempt at a comeback).

I guess what I’m getting at is that at the moment, Kansas holds all of the advantages over Missouri’s head. Even though Norm could never get the Tigers to a Final Four or National Championship as the Jayhawks had done, he made the Tigers just as competitive as Kansas from the 1970’s up until the mid-1990’s. Since then, every win the Tigers have gotten against the hated Jayhawks has been something to cherish since they have been so hard to come by in the most recent years. That’s why, despite the 1996-1997 being an otherwise bad year for Tiger basketball, that win against Kansas was so special to those who got to see it. Games like that don’t show up too often, and you need to embrace the moment when they do. Nowadays, embracing usually means DVR’ing it so that you can watch again when you’re bored on a Sunday night or something like that. This game would have been a must-DVR if we had the ability to DVR back then (no, I’m not counting tape recording. What are we, cavemen?), and it’s definitely one game that I wish I could have seen, or at least remembered.