Mizzou basketball arrives in St. Louis for the NCAA Tournament

St. Louis, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Tigers have arrived at the Big Dance.

Mizzou men's basketball made the less-than-two-hour trip to the Enterprise Center where they're primed for a meeting with Miami (FL.) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

At this game last year, head coach Dennis Gates and company suffered a loss to Drake in the first round. Now having made the tournament for a third time in the last four years, Mizzou is more ready than ever for the challenges this event poses.

"Last time we were here, it was really ugly," said Mizzou forward Mark Mitchell. "I'm just proud of the team. Proud of the fight, the resilience we've shown. To get back to this point, you know, after we lost to Illinois and in December, people just wrote us totally off of the tournament team. We looked each other in the mirror and just kept fighting."

After falling to the Fighting Illini in the Enterprise Center almost three months ago, this team pulled itself together heading into SEC play.

"While other team's season may have started at the beginning of November, ours began January 1st," said coach Gates. "We started preparing for Florida and Jayden Stone and Trent Pierce, who hadn't played together, is now finally a part of the team."

Pierce and Stone's return to the line up made an immediate resurgance and revitalized the team's hopes of playing late into March.

"I think just the faith, the seed of faith that we had that, once we get Trent back and a couple of those guys and a few changes made amongst the locker room," said Stone. "We were going to have an opportunity to do something special. So we've just been riding that wave all the way to now."

Now returning to the tournament in 2026, the Tigers are set to face seventh-seeded Miami in the opening round, and the team is excited about the possibility of proving to everybody that they shouldn't have been written off.

"I feel like we can really make a run, and go really far and win this tournament," said Mizzou guard T.O. Barrett. "So it means a lot just being able to come back in and and redeem ourselves."

Up Next - Mizzou and Miami are set to tip off from the Enterprise center on Friday, March 20 at 9:10 p.m.