Missouri’s Marcus Denmon saves a ball from going out-of-bounds during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Baylor Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012, in Columbia, Mo. Missouri won the game 72-57.Even as they’ve won 23 of their first 25 games and soared to No. 3 in this week’s Associated Press college basketball poll, the Missouri Tigers have sometimes struggled to show their critics that the pride of the Show Me State is a serious national championship contender.
They’re too short (no starter over 6-foot-8 and three under 6-4). Too thin (only seven players average at least 15 minutes a game). The school has never reached the NCAA tournament’s Final Four in the 73 years it’s been staged.
“I still think they’re just below that top tier of Syracuse, Kentucky, Ohio State and North Carolina,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said this past weekend. “That doesn’t mean they’re not really good. They could definitely win the national championship. But I think their margin of error is probably a little smaller than those other schools.”
Added fellow “GameDay” veteran Hubert Davis: “I don’t have them in my Final Four, but there’s no question they could get there. Missouri is so hard to defend. Very unorthodox. They have so many guys who can create their own shots. But can their bigs play big against the best teams?”
When a team’s average rebounding edge is less than one a game (32.4 to 31.8) and opponents shoot better than 43 percent from the field, those concerns are legitimate.