Mizzou women start last hurrah to build a NCAA Tournament resume, but need to figure out Arkansas

Sunday will be a telling point for Missouri women's basketball.

It's been nearly four years since the Tigers have beaten Arkansas. The Razorbacks already beat MU in Mizzou Arena this season.

This brings Robin Pingeton to Feb. 12, 2023. It's Super Bowl Sunday, one of the biggest sporting days of the year. It's also perhaps the biggest game of the season for Missouri.

Win, and the Tigers' tournament hopes are still alive. Lose, and the Tigers may have lost their best chance at earning a win to get back into the tournament discussion.

"My guess would be if you can get to 8-8 in SEC play, I don't remember a team not going to the tournament," Pingeton said. "I think you're still probably on the bubble and you got to win a game or two in the SEC tournament. So, we got five games left. I think if you want to get a seat at the table, you got to win all five."

MU starts that quest towards 8-8 on Sunday in Fayetteville against a Razorback team that's in a slump.

The Hogs have lost five of their last six, including a three-point overtime home loss to Ole Miss and a road loss to Vanderbilt on Thursday. That's the same Vanderbilt team MU beat up in Columbia last week.

Pingeton said MU's current situation reminds her of Kentucky last year. The Wildcats went 1-9 between Jan. 9 and Feb. 10 before running the table in the SEC Tournament and beating South Carolina in the SEC tournament championship game.

"They just kind of found that magic in a bottle and had a great run," Pingeton said. "It happens. So that's the beauty of sports, the opportunity is there. The path is there, but we got work to do for sure and this week's a big week for us."

To find that magic, Pingeton said Missouri needs to start with its defense and follow through with its ball security.

The Tigers failed at defense against Alabama, allowing Brittney Davis to set a career-high in points and kept committing turnovers in the fourth quarter.

Pingeton said the team has to take it a segment at a time.

"We've all got to make sure we're all in one play at a time, just emotionally, mentally, physically," Pingeton said. "Somehow, some way, we've proven that we can do it. We just don't do it consistently and so that's got to be continuing to be a point of emphasis."

Going play-by-play is a simple way of narrowing down the season, but it's a plan that can work if Missouri can trust it.

The Tigers have proved they can win small segments of each game, be it as wide-ranging as a whole half, as segmented as a quarter or as short as the five minutes portion of play between media timeouts.

Simplifying the game that way makes it easier for players to understand what they need to do to win games.

"It simplifies it, looking at it play by play," MU guard Katlyn Gilbert said. "Looking at it as a whole, it might get a little anxious, it might get nervous and things like that. But if you go out there and work hard for each possession of each play, then it just like, okay, I know what I have to do with this play."

That is easier said than done against an Arkansas team that's had Missouri's number thoroughly, including last season when the Hogs handled the Tigers three times: twice in the regular season and once more in the SEC Tournament.

Arkansas has height, length, speed and athleticism among its player, and it always seems like someone different catches fire for the Razorbacks as they handle MU.

"That's why you've got to really be assignment correct and on point defensively," Pingeton said. "You can't stop everything, but you've got contain better than what we did against 'Bama."

MU gets its latest shot against Arkansas at 2 p.m. on Sunday. The game will be on SEC Network+.

In that shot, Pingeton hopes to have her Tigers do something they haven't done yet: play a complete game where each player is on their A game.

"That hasn't happened for us yet," Pingeton said. "I think all year long, it hasn't happened for us yet. And so we just gotta stay true to the process and continue to grind."

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Mizzou women start last hurrah to build a NCAA Tournament resume