The Missouri Tigers basketball team projected to finish 11th in the SEC is as much a product of a new coach with a new team, as it is the strength of the SEC conference.
At the season’s tipoff, the SEC will place five teams in the top 25 – three of them in the first 11. The Tigers will need to develop team chemistry and learn winning basketball and do so quickly.
Coach Dennis Gates is a good coach. In his inaugural season, he may need to be a great coach to push this team to the upper crust of the Southeastern Conference.
The Tigers have one of the softer out-of-conference schedules in the SEC, but have a few juggernauts they cannot avoid. Constant rivals, Illinois Fighting Illini and Kansas Jayhawks serve as two formidable opponents and losses for the Missouri Tigers.
The non-conference schedule may be weak, but the hopes are the easier games will build confidence for the newly formed Missouri Tigers basketball team, and the big-stage games against Kansas and Illinois will prepare Mizzou for stiffer SEC competition.
#Mizzou basketball is picked to finish 11th in the SEC by league media pic.twitter.com/TPUWVR4dUF
— Power Mizzou (@PowerMizzoucom) October 19, 2022
Missouri Tigers basketball looks to build behind new Coach, Dennis Gates
This Tigers team will shock some people, in a good way. Coach Gates will have his guys ready. By the time the season turns over to conference play, the Missouri Tigers will have twelve games played under their belt, and ideally, at least nine of them wins.
For the university to school the “experts,” they must win the could-go-either-way-games. The “I can’t call it” matchups are what will separate this team from the bottom and the middle. Mizzou is not yet good enough for the top, but they can compete and nestle nicely, somewhere in the middle of the conference standings.
The Missouri Tigers basketball program will pencil in the following games as must-wins:
– LSU: 2/1/2023 @ Columbia, MO
– South Carolina: 2/7/2023 @ Columbia, MO
– Mississippi State: 2/21/2023 @ Starkville, MS
– Ole Miss: 3/4/2023 @ Columbia, MO
Without winning at least three of the four games referenced above, the Tigers will be looking at the basement of the conference.
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