Mizzou ends regular season winless in SEC play
BATON ROUGE, La. (KMIZ)
Mizzou Men's Basketball ended Saturday's regular season finale with some unwanted history. After falling to LSU 84-80 on the road, the Tigers became the first team in program history to finish conference play with zero wins in more than a century.
Dennis Gates' crew took a six-point lead into halftime, but LSU rallied to post a 14-0 scoring run midway through the second half to give them a seven-point advantage. The Bayou Bengals led by as many as 21 points with 4:40 left in the game. Mizzou managed to string together a quick 11-0 scoring run to cut that deficit down to 10 points with 1:32 left on the clock and even made it a one-possession game on two different occasions. However, that late rally fell short as LSU took care of business at the free throw line to hold on for the win.
Sean East II became the first Tiger since Doug Smith in 1990-91 to post seven consecutive 20-point games, ending Saturday's contest with a game-high 26 points. East shot about 71% from the field and also grabbed a team-high five rebounds. Noah Carter and Tamar Bates also finished the game in double figures, scoring 18 points and 13 points respectively. Carter made four of his six three-point attempts in this game.
As a team, Mizzou finished with a higher field goal percentage, three-point percentage and free throw percentage than LSU. Both teams committed the same number of turnovers and each scored 17 points off those takeaways. However, LSU did grab nine more rebounds than Mizzou and visited the charity stripe 37 times.
Up next - Mizzou will begin SEC Tournament play amid an 18-game losing streak. The Tigers are the No. 14 seed and will face Georgia in the opening round on Wednesday, March 13.
