Missouri Tigers women’s basketball doesn’t make the cut for the NCAA Tournament
The Missouri Tigers women’s basketball team came just short of going dancing.
On the cusp of making the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019, Mizzou (18-12, 7-9 SEC) was left on the outside looking in. Robin Pingeton’s squad was left out of the 68-team field, but made the WNIT as an automatic qualifier on Sunday night.
The Tigers will play host to Drake at 7 p.m. Thursday in Mizzou Arena. If Mizzou wins, it would play either Northern Iowa or the Kansas City Roos in the second round.
Missouri State (24-7, 14-4 Missouri Valley), Villanova (23-8, 15-4 Big East) and DePaul (22-10, 14-6 Big East) made the NCAA Tournament as No. 11 seeds over the Tigers.
Following an overtime loss to Arkansas in the SEC Tournament, Mizzou (18-12, 7-9 SEC) was left waiting in suspense on the bubble for nearly two weeks.
The Tigers had a better shot at making the field than years past, as the field was expanded from 64 to 68 teams with the addition of play-in games this season. But the bracket still didn’t go the Tigers’ way on Selection Sunday.
Missouri got off to a hot start this season but fizzled down the stretch.
The Tigers were 12-2 after upsetting No. 1 South Carolina in the first game of SEC play and looked primed to be a force in the league. But the team only got into the win column six more times through January, February and March. It cost them.
Perhaps what will sting the most for the Tigers is their last loss to the Razorbacks in what was a winnable game.
Star guard Aijha Blackwell, who averaged 15.3 points, 13.3 rebounds and 1.8 assists in the regular season, was back for the Tigers after missing three of the last four games for not meeting team “standards and expectations.” She didn’t take her usual place in the starting lineup and wasn’t subbed in by Pingeton until under three minutes were left in the second quarter. The head coach barely played Blackwell, including in the final seconds of regulation and overtime. Blackwell only saw 11 minutes on the court and finished with five points and eight rebounds.
“We won two big games where she wasn’t in the rotation, and being out for seven days is a while,” Pingeton said at the time. “We have tweaked some things offensively and I’m sure conditioning is a little bit of a factor. You kind of feel like your hands are tied a little bit when somebody is away from the team for seven days, two games, handful of practices.
“Just had to find a way to try and battle through it without her. Obviously, she’s a huge part of what we’ve been able to get done this season. She’s an elite-level player, for sure, but we had to go with who has been in the rotation and we felt like that was going to give us our best shot. I don’t know if I think it’s really fair to the other players to all of a sudden change something after not being with a team for seven days. That’s a challenging call as a coach.”
This story was originally published March 13, 2022 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Missouri Tigers women’s basketball doesn’t make the cut for the NCAA Tournament."
