By the numbers: Mizzou Tigers men’s basketball reaches historic level of blowout losses

Lila Bromberg
·2 min read

Missouri men’s basketball (7-8, 1-2 SEC) is having one of the worst seasons in program history in one particular area: blowout losses.

The Tigers’ 87-43 defeat at Arkansas on Wednesday night was the largest loss of the Cuonzo Martin era. The last time Mizzou suffered a defeat by 44 points was when it fell by 49 at Kentucky on Jan. 13, 2015, Kim Anderson’s first season as coach.

But the numbers go well beyond the past decade.

Missouri has four losses of at least 25 points this season: at Kansas (37 points), to Illinois on a neutral court (25 points), at Kentucky (27 points) and at Arkansas (44 points). Across the last 65 seasons, spanning the Big Eight, Big 12 and SEC eras, no other MU team has had as many blowout defeats of that margin.

You have to go back all the way to 1944-45, when the Tigers were in the Big Six and World War II was underway, to find the only other team in program history to lose as many games by 25 points or more. That MU squad also had four — two of which were against opponents that only existed as war-era teams — but it was never defeated by a margin of more than 36 points.

In fact, no team in program history — which dates back to 1906 — had ever lost two games by at least 37 points in the same season … until the 2021-22 Tigers.

Throw in the games against Florida State in the Jacksonville Classic (81-58) and at Liberty (66-45) and Mizzou has lost six games by 20 points or more this year. That has only happened in three other instances across all 115 prior seasons of Missouri basketball: In 1944-45, 1965-66 and 2014-15.

The Tigers were defeated by at least 20 points seven times in both the 1965-66 and 1944-45 seasons — the only two times that’s ever happened. For some context of how far off this era of college basketball was: the 1966 NCAA Tournament only consisted of 22 teams and there were a mere eight in the field in 1945.

Remember, all of these historic statistics apply to entire seasons. Missouri is only 15 games into 2021-22 with plenty of basketball left to be played. Perhaps that’s what makes this all the more concerning.