Mizzou’s NCAA Tournament loss to Princeton hurts but doesn’t diminish momentous season

Surrounded on the postgame stage by four anguished players whose collegiate careers had ended moments before with Princeton’s 78-63 muzzling of Mizzou on Saturday at the Golden 1 Center, first-year coach Dennis Gates no doubt felt their pain.

But he still projected an unflinching radiance, grace and perspective about this team’s story and journey.

Exactly as he should have.

“They’ve done everything that I’ve asked them to do. They’ve done even more, right?” he said. “What they’ve been able to do together … 20 years from now we’ll look back, 10 years from now, we’ll look back, five years from now we’ll look back, and see how important it was what they’ve done.”

The future, of course, is its own unknowable realm.

But a miserable ending notwithstanding, the distance from MU’s dreary recent past to the promising present tells us at least something about the open-ended potential in the years to come.

And spare us any snark about seventh-seeded Mizzou losing to Princeton (23-8) as the No. 15 seed out of the Ivy League.

Those Tigers also beat second-seeded Arizona because they’re exceptionally well-coached, cohesive and way more athletic than people might perceive them. If you love basketball, you could love this team, which inflicted on Mizzou the most lopsided NCAA tourney victory by any 15 seed (in 14 wins).

Princeton’s offense revolved around forward Tosan Evbuomwan, the Ivy League player of the year whose presence is so spectacular that his arrival with the team was “like a brilliant, blinding light from heaven,” as coach Mitch Henderson put it. And guard Ryan Langborg (22 points), Henderson asserted, was the best player on the floor on Saturday.

“If you want to argue,” he said, smiling, “I’m happy to argue with anybody in here.”

No argument here.

In fact, there was no arguing with the fact Princeton was the best team on Saturday — a team we believe has a fine chance to beat the Creighton-Baylor winner to advance to the Elite Eight.

“The world looks at us as two upsets,” Evbuomwan said. “But I feel like we’re supposed to be here.”

None of which diminishes Mizzou’s season.

Because that overarching story isn’t about a second-round NCAA Tournament loss to a heck of a team.

It’s about Gates melding in nine new players to jolt the program out of the doldrums of a 12-win season to a 25-10 finish and its first NCAA tourney victory since 2010.

It was about creating an instant revitalization with a galvanized team that captured the imaginations of a fan base long stranded somewhere between apathy and cynicism.

It was about setting a tone and a foundation and a culture, notions that might have been true even without tangible results but were reinforced by a captivating team.

“We weren’t supposed to be here at all in the first place …” said a red-eyed Tre Gomillion, who missed the last four games of the season with a groin injury but was among those on stage. “At the end of the day, we lost today, but we have a lot to be proud of.”

Alas, this second-round loss wasn’t part of that lot.

MU led the game for all of 32 seconds, was pulverized on the boards 44-30, outscored 19-2 on second-chance points and managed only half as many 3-pointers as Princeton’s 12.

Other than a few breakout bursts, Princeton’s defense kept MU off-kilter almost all game.

Since Princeton committed only six turnovers in the first 37 minutes, Mizzou never quite ran the way it wanted to. And with Princeton clogging the lane, MU struggled to hit mid-range jumpers and 3-pointers (six of 22) and went to the free-throw line a season-low seven times.

“They had a good game plan: Block the lane, stop penetration early,” said DeAndre Gholston, who led MU with 19 points. “It helped them out.”

Meanwhile, Mizzou seldom was able to disrupt Princeton’s offense, which moved the ball so deftly and precisely that it created numerous open looks.

Princeton, in fact, missed a number of open 3-pointers that would have made the score even more lopsided.

And Princeton did what good teams do: After seizing a big first-half lead, it knocked MU back each time it got in reach.

When MU fell behind 14 points and whittled the lead to five early in the second half, Princeton went on a 7-0 binge.

Then Princeton retaliated all the more emphatically when Missouri cut it to 43-37 with 10 minutes 56 seconds left.

It unleashed a 19-5 run capped by one of Blake Peters’ five 3-pointers in a 17-point performance.

Peters, incidentally, wants to be Secretary of State one day, Henderson said, and speaks fluent Chinese. (“Not fluent,” Peters said, “but close.”) But the most interesting thing about him in the context of the game is that his grandparents are Mizzou alums and supporters. “They’re very passionate (MU) Tiger fans,” Peters said. “But I know they were cheering for their grandson today.”

Other passionate MU fans won’t have such consolation about this.

But they should feel the solace of knowing this program is in the capable hands of a dynamic 43-year-old man of great resolve whose energy and recruiting mojo suggests his best days are ahead.

After a season to cherish, not lament.

“We want to be known as, like, the steppingstone for Coach,” senior Ben Sternberg said.

Or as senior D’Moi Hodge put it: “Just building the foundation of what we know he can be.”

A foundation, naturally, is only as significant as what gets built on it. What’s to come is what will define Gates’ tenure at Mizzou, and he’ll have gaps to fill without Gholston, Hodge and Gomillion.

For that matter, first-team All-Southeastern Conference performer Kobe Brown may or may not return: Brown declined to address that after the game, saying he just wanted to grieve with teammates for now.

But a year ago Saturday, MU still was searching for the replacement for Cuonzo Martin as nine players were entering the transfer portal. The program hadn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since it joined the SEC (in 2012) and was in its longest NCAA tourney victory drought since the endless gap between 1944 and 1976.

What Gates has done so far has been astounding.

The challenge now is to make this the baseline, not the ceiling.

Manage that, and 20-plus years from now we really will be looking back at how important this season was.