After opening the season with a win on the road over Howard, the Mizzou Tigers hosted Southeastern Missouri State (SEMO) in what turned out to be a thrilling contest.
Coming into Mizzou Arena as heavy underdogs after a blowout loss on Sunday, the Redhawks were looking to bounce back against one of the SEC’s top rosters.
Coming out of the gates, the Tigers saw themselves with a quick 12-0 lead, and it took until just past the 15-minute mark for the Redhawks to knock down their first points of the contest.
Despite the quick 12-0 lead for the Tigers, that quickly vanished as SEMO began to crawl back into the game on behalf of Luke Almodovar.
In just his second career Division I game, Almodovar would finish the game with a career-high 24 points.
In addition to Almodovar, Redhawk junior almost singlehandedly pulled the Redhawks back into the game off of his team-leading 17 first-half points.
From starting up 12-0, the Missouri defense just collapsed, and they trailed 51-46 going into the locker room at halftime.
Against Howard, West Virginia transfer Jayden Stone led the bench in scoring with 13 points.
In the first half against SEMO, one of the key pieces for the Tiger offense was once again Stone, who scored 10 points off the bench in the first half.
While it was Stone who carried the load off the bench for the Tigers offensively, Mark Mitchell led the Tigers with a game-high 29 points in the victory.
With SEMO’s tallest starter standing at 6-foot-7, it was one of those games where Mark Mitchell was able to take over, specifically as continuously down the stretch, he was the guy that head coach Dennis Gates could rely on.
Including Mitchell, Anthony Robinson II led the Tiger effort in the second half as he finished the game with 14 points and three steals, hitting free throws to seal the game.
Defensively, the Tigers were often behind on rotations, and it allowed the Redhawks to get good looks at the rim all night long.
As for what went wrong offensively for the Tigers, it was 19 turnovers that made the game difficult for the Tigers to close down the stretch.
While free-throw shooting was poor in the first half, the Tigers shot a solid 76% from the free-throw line in the second half as they were able to pull out a 89-84 victory over a very tough SEMO squad.
The Tigers will be back at home on Sunday as they host the Virginia Military Institute at 3:30 p.m. CST.