No. 20 Mizzou MBB focuses on ‘most important’ opponent: themselves

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The No. 20 Mizzou men's basketball team is in the midst of preparation for Saturday's game against Vanderbilt. The Tigers will return home after a close loss to No. 13 Arkansas on Wednesday night.

Head coach Dennis Gates said there is a balancing act between learning from Wednesday night's loss and moving forward. He did add that his team has to reflect on that loss in order to prepare for the Commodores.

"You don't allow time to conflict it, you have to debrief to move forward. You have to learn from what your last outing was. You have to recover mentally, physically and emotionally before you can even poor any other game into the realities of your team," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind my players were disappointed in not coming away with a victory at Arkansas, but when you have that, you have to treat it with such delicacy because it is sort of trauma. I want my guys to be able to heal and move forward properly, but also prepare."

Gates said the top-20 loss at Arkansas had a feeling of March to it. He said, as they have all season, his team will take lessons from that game, as Bud Walton Arena is one of the toughest place to play in the country.

"I thought our guys responded in small sample sizes, but not enough to really come away with the win," Gates said.

The 8-6 Vanderbilt Commodores will be in Columbia on Saturday morning for an 11 a.m. tip off. Vandy is on a three-game win streak coming into the match up, with one of those wins coming against South Carolina.

"It's an SEC game," forward Noah Carter said. "It's our second game at home in the SEC, but we expect all of them to be dog fights and that's our mentality. We got to go out there and play our hardest and give our best. We need to bounce back, so we need to go out there and get this W."

You can watch the full press conference with Carter, as well as guard Sean East, in the video players below.

It will be another sellout crowd for Gates and company at the Arena on Saturday morning. Mizzou Athletics announced that tickets of MU's Jan. 21 against No. 7 Alabama have also sold out. That makes for four-straight sellouts for Gates in his first season at the helm of Mizzou basketball.

"It's outstanding and what it says is what we always thought, that this place is a special place," he said.