Mizzou men’s basketball presser notes: Memphis

Nov 1, 2024 | Uncategorized

Written By

Cal Tobias/Rock M Nation

What Dennis Gates and Tamar Bates had to say before the Tigers take a trip to Grind City.

With the start of the 2024-25 season beckoning, Mizzou will be looking to flip the script from a down campaign in 2023-24.

The opportunity to do so starts Monday in a road contest against Memphis, who’s projected to make the NCAA Tournament in its seventh year under Penny Hardaway.

Here’s what Dennis Gates and Tamar Bates had to say leading up to the season-opening road trip to The Volunteer State.

Dennis Gates | Head coach

Excerpt from opening statement: “We’ve accepted an exciting challenge to start our season on the road, something that will give me, as the head coach, a barometer to see where we are, to see where our hard work from the time this group have gotten together in June until now to kind of gage exactly what we need to work on.”

On the advantage of starting the season on the road against a quality team: “To be able to be one of the teams in the country that has put their schedule together and competing at a high level against an opponent like Memphis on the road, it just gives us time to get back to the drawing board to see where we are.”

On what Memphis excels at: “They’ve been one of the top teams in turnover margin in terms of creating offense with their turnovers, or creating turnovers. They do a little bit of run and jump. They do a little bit of pressing man-to-man or diamond press…They do a great job of getting to the free throw line, and they push the pace. That’s one of the things that we have to understand. All these things are seen in our conference in the SEC, and that’s why it’s also important to play these games so it can prepare us for our conference schedule.”

On the availability of Tony Perkins: “Tony Perkins has been practicing, and I’m excited about what he’s been able to do. So for me, he’s had a great week of practice.”

On challenges of scouting a team like Memphis with very few returners: “I don’t think it’s challenges, because they’re in the same boat as us…There’s no advantage that they have over us. It’s their first game as well. What we have to do is see where the planning of our first game, where it brings us, and I think we’ve done a great job of preparing our guys in situations. But also you got to look at their experiences. Our guys have played basketball before. They’ve been in big games, they’ve been on the road, and we just got to show up.”

On Caleb Grill being named a captain: “I smile at that. I smile at that statement. Caleb Grill has grown as it relates to mentally, emotionally and obviously physically. We know what he’s capable of. I think his leadership has been intentional, and when you look at the big picture, he strives to be a coach one day…him seeing a different lens from a different view versus being in the weeds as a player, he’s able to take a step back and look at every part of the game, every part of practice planning, and he’s been able to grow this offseason. What I’m satisfied with, and why he was named captain is because of what he brought to those guys who were newcomers. I saw him building a bridge for those guys for them to understand our philosophy and what my expectations were. He, along with Jeremy Sanchez, our captains and in addition to Tamar Bates.”

On Grill’s injury from last season: “We knew at some point he would get back on the court, and it was just a matter of, was it going to be last season or was it going to be this season. Obviously, there was setbacks in his healing process. That’s the only reason why he did not come back last year. That’s why he’s here this year, and we’re excited to have him.”

On winning the foul battle: “When you look at, as a conference, I think we’ve led when it comes down to fouls, we’ve been at the top of that in terms of that category, especially when it came down to NCAA Tournament. We were the most fouling-est team out there, or the conference. I would say we have to do a better job as an individual team, and that’s what we’ve been working on. We don’t want to just give up easy baskets. Yeah, we want to play hard. We want to be physical, but you got to make sure you’re playing smart. Certain situations happen. Memphis does a great job of getting to the foul line, and other teams do it. We just got to be able to do it ourselves. And I’m excited about what this season will bring, especially when there’s been intentionality for us to get to that foul line a little bit more than we have in years past. The category that’s the most important is assist-to-turnover ratio. I think you know when you look at Memphis and Alabama game, Memphis forced Alabama into 20 turnovers. No team, I don’t care if it’s exhibition, I don’t care if it’s a closed scrimmage or a charity game, no team wants to turn the ball over 20 times. So that says something about that Memphis program.”

On staying mentally strong in a likely hostile road environment: “We got to be conscious. We can’t allow the environment to get to us. We can’t allow the sound, the noise, the runs to get to us and shut us down. We don’t want to be paralyzed by our failures or our mistakes. We got to be able to meet our mistakes with great plays on the defensive end and offensive execution and reading the game the right way.”

On losing the rebounding battle against Lincoln: “I don’t look at us losing that battle. I look at the point of which our best rebounders were subbed out. Mark Mitchell, Caleb Grill, those guys were subbed out for a large portion of that game, and it’s key for freshmen to get reps, and we’ve learned from those reps with our freshman group. But we did a great job as it relates to the recruiting, identifying guys that are really good at pursuing the basketball. Tony Perkins is a great rebounding guard from that position. Mark Mitchell, Aidan Shaw did a better job in the exhibition. He was in situations where he wasn’t able to secure some rebounds. You look at Jacob Crews, who averaged eight or nine rebounds a game. I’m looking forward to seeing what this next game will be in our opportunities of rebounding versus not. Lincoln did a great job. Don’t get me wrong. I’m excited about what I saw from our team. I’m not excited about our second group losing the rebounding battle at all.”

Tamar Bates | Guard

On how he feels entering the season: “Feel good, feel confident, feel healthy mentally, physically and emotionally. I would say the team has taken on that same mentality going into this season.”

On how he’s different than this time last season: “For me, experience is the best teacher, so just being here a year, being under Coach Gates and his staff, I know a lot more. I know what they expect. I’m just in a better mind frame mentally and just ready to attack my senior season and attack this year as a team and just go out and put our best foot forward every night.”

On being named a team captain: “It means a lot just because the coaches see me as somebody who can lead the team. But my peers, my teammates, the guys around me look to me for guidance and for leadership. It’s a tremendous honor, and I take it every bit of serious. I don’t take it lightly at all being named team captain. Obviously, it’s a job that comes with a certain set of responsibilities and a lot of the pressure. The setbacks, and when we fall short, it’s gonna fall on my shoulders, as well as (Caleb) Grill and Jeremy (Sanchez), my other captains. But it’s a great responsibility, and I’m ready to take on.”

On starting the season at Memphis: “It’s amazing. Just to have the opportunity to be able to play such a high-caliber team on the road. I honestly love playing on the road. Obviously, playing at home is a lot of fun. You got the energy from the fans, but just the environment and what you can do on the road when you’re successful, there’s nothing like it. I feel like there’s nothing better than the road wins, when it’s going into somebody else’s building and taking over. So it’s a tremendous opportunity that we’re ready to take advantage of…obviously, we have to have a certain level of focus coming into every game, but we have a really good team that we’re going on the road to play, so it’s just good to know that our preparation has to be at the highest level.”

On the team’s identity: “What we’ve been building since the summer is just being a defensive-minded team. Obviously, we have a lot of guys, whether it’s the players that returned or transferred in, who can score the basketball, but our mentality that we want to take on is being tough, physical and disruptive on the defensive end.”

On Alabama and Memphis each shooting 48 free throws in the Rocket City Classic earlier this week: “Both teams were probably playing a little over-aggressive, because nobody could foul out. So that probably had a lot to do with it. That was probably a gameplan, just to foul whatever, be a little bit more aggressive than normally. Practicing those habits may affect the game in terms of how aggressive they play. They might get away with some stuff, they might not but. Obviously, going into the game, we know that they’re big and heavy in the gaps, so we got to be strong with the ball. They’re a huge run and jump team. They play fast. They try to play physical on defense and fly around. So we just know we got to be strong and take care of the ball.”

On the benefits of playing an exhibition against Lincoln: “It was just good to play in front of fans and put on our real uniforms and just get film, just go out in a real game setting and see what we do well and what we have to clean up before our first actual game. I feel like we did a lot of really good things, and on the flip side, we had some clips of things that we had to clean up. And it was just good to have that exhibition, because last year we didn’t have that opportunity. So it was good to be able to get out in front of anything we needed to, per se, put a band aid over, clean up or pay a little bit more attention to in practice.”

On what Mizzou needed to clean up from the exhibition: “The first few things that stuck out when we were watching film was just our ball screen defense, whether it’s an outer-third or a middle third or baseline drives and sealing…Let me simplify a little bit more. Just really, more defensive stuff. We cleaned up some things on offense in terms of spacing and just being more patient, playing faster, playing like at the pace that we would like to, shooting the shots that we should. Mainly, a lot of the things were geared towards what we could fix and clean up on the defensive side of the ball.”

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