Texas A&M Observations

Saturday brought more disappointment in a season that has been full of it for our Missouri Tigers. Ol' Mizzou fell 77-69 to the Aggies and in all honesty it wasn't that close. The Tigers actually led 30-25 at halftime but it seemed like the A&M players were moving in slow motion. MU opened the second half with a crippling scoring drought and fell behind as much as 17 before the Aggies turned on the cruise control and almost made things interesting.

I have to say I was not all that impressed with this Texas A&M team. The way they opened the game it was like they expected Mizzou to roll over and lose by 20 and then they were incredibly careless with the basketball as the Tigers tried to rally back in the final minutes. If you were just looking at Joseph Jones and Bryan Davis you would expect them to be able to trade punches with the KUs and the Texases in the Big 12, but come Tournament time this team is going to miss the heart that Acie Law IV gave them last season.

Here are some observations I made about the guys wearing the Black and Gold:

• What happened to Leo Lyons in the final 5 minutes of the game? For the first 35 minutes Leo was drifting through the motions as he has done for the majority of his disappointing career when a light seemed to finally turn on. Lyons looked like a future NBA draft pick in the final minutes and finished with 24 points (10 in the final 2 1/2 minutes). Thank you Leo for finally playing an inspired game when it was way too late for us to have a reasonable chance at winning. Talk about a player I'm sick of watching. Has there been a player in MU history that has wasted more talent than Leo Lyons? Some might argue that Mizzou's only McDonald's High School All-American Travon Bryant was more of an underachiever. But I would argue that the expectations for Travon were unreasonable from the start. It's impossible to predict how some high school players are going to be able to adapt to the college game and Travon fell into that category. Leo is easily the most talented player on our roster and could be one of the more versatile big men in the Big 12 if he could focus for 40 minutes every game. Unfortunately he's more interested in becoming the next Jay-Z than he is in becoming the next Kevin Garnett.
  

• Where was the J.T. Tiller that we saw the past three games? After capturing Big 12 POW honors for his play following the suspensions of the "Athena 5" Tiller mutated back into the erratic player that we've grown all too used to. Tiller finished with only 5 points and four turnovers and showed no sign of the swagger that he had the past week. With Stefhon Hannah gone, the rest of this season is going to be an opportunity for J.T. to assert himself as a leader on this team and if the Tigers are going to have any shot at going to the Big Dance in the conceivable future then he's going to have to step up to the plate.

• In addition to Tiller, Keon Lawrence has also gone MIA once again. I thought Keon was the ballsiest player the Tigers had last season and felt like he had a chance to be the best guard at Missouri since Kareem Rush. That player made a brief reappearance last Monday when he scored a career high 25 against the Squaks at Allen Fielhouse and I thought that might have been the end of his sophomore slump but it looks like I was mistaken. I never would have thought the words tentative, hesitant and unconfident would be used to describe Keon Lawrence after watching his freshman campaign but those are the words that best describe his play this year. Keon comes from a very rough upbringing and I have read that he has been going through some personal problems this season (his older brother was shot and killed recently and both his grandmother and father are battling health problems) and I would imagine those have been weighing very heavily on him. Lets hope he's able to overcome them and become the great player that he has the potential to be.

• Matt Lawrence: 23 minutes. 2 rebounds. 3 fouls. 0 assists. 0 points. Thanks for playing Mateo.
  

• To end this on a positive note Justin Safford continues to impress since his playing time has increased. He finished with 10 points and four rebounds in 19 minutes. He also played some pretty solid defense on A&M's big men. I'm still trying to figure out how much potential this guy has. There is virtually no scouting report on the guy since he rarely sniffed the floor through the first half of the season so opposing defenses have not had a chance to prepare for him. His game is a little awkward but I can see him developing into a very solid role player that can bring a lot of energy off the bench and will fit in nicely in coach Anderson's system. At least he always  plays hard and he's not Darryl Butterfield, which might actually be the best thing he has going for him.
  

Next game for the Tigers is Wednesday when they travel to Lincoln to play the Cornhuskers. A huge game for Mizzou if they want to keep their NIT hopes alive. 

I'm out like Matt Lawrence's jump shot.