Mizzou basketball guard T.O. Barrett scored a career-high 28 points in Mizzou basketball's win over Tennessee, propelling the Tigers to victory with a breakout performance that his teammates and coaches saw coming.
COLUMBIA — T.O. Barrett is 19 years old, as are many other college athletes.
He stands at 6-foot-4, 205 pounds and plays like every bit of it, using his physical frame to plow through defenders and attack the basket at will. Barrett did exactly that in Missouri's 73-69 win over the No. 22 Tennessee Volunteers on Tuesday night, barreling his way into the paint to pour in a career-high 28 points on 12-for-17 shooting.
But he didn’t always play this way — it’s been a growing process for the sophomore guard, as are all other walks of life.
“T.O. is just now growing facial hair,” Missouri head coach Dennis Gates said.
Yes, it was a playful jab, but it also puts Barrett’s rapid on-court growth into perspective; he’s erupted into one of the team’s top scorers at a much quicker rate than most expected. Rather than growing between the offseasons, his metamorphosis is occurring right before the thousands of eyes in Mizzou Arena.
“I feel like I get more comfortable with every game,” Barrett said. “So just these past, like, six, seven games, is kind of where I feel like I'm going the most. I'm learning off of every single game, and I'm learning where I can get to my spots and where I can be physical… In the past, I wasn't as physical, I wasn't using my body as much, and you can just see me doing that now on the court, and I feel like it's looking good.”
He wasn’t using his frame like this as recently as two games ago, however — Barrett didn’t punish the mismatch that Vanderbilt’s undersized guard rotation presented him.
Barrett didn’t start hot out the gates against the Volunteers either. His Tigers got down to a 12-2 deficit in the first 4:33 and he wasn’t punishing the smaller Ja’Kobi Gillespie
Tennessee threw a collective of defenders at Barrett, who eventually found the weakness and ran with it.
“I thought tonight — once he realized Gillespie wasn't going to foul, and then they switched and put Nate Ament on him, then they switched and put Bishop Boswell on him — I thought at that point his confidence just continued to grow,” Gates said. “Everyone took a back seat to allow T.O., to make sure he had the ball in his hands.”
Barrett has been on the opposite side of that scenario many times this season, deferring to Mark Mitchell, Jayden Stone or any other Tiger who had the hot hand.
“It feels great because I'm willing to do the same for everybody else,” Barrett said. “We have a full circle, a whole team, unselfish.”
Barrett’s emergence as a high-caliber scoring guard may come as a surprise to outsiders, but it was no surprise to Mitchell, who recalled a specific practice last offseason as his moment of realization regarding Barrett’s talent.
“I was watching him just killing in practice one day,” Mitchell said. “I was like, ‘He's special’, like, his pace, his cadence, and just with the size, athleticism he had, and I've been a T.O. believer since day one. So I mean, him having these performances like this is nothing I'm really surprised about.”
What Mitchell saw in practice months ago is exactly what the Volunteers experienced Thursday night — an unstoppable force, relentless in his pursuit of the rim.
“I didn’t feel like they could guard me,” Barrett said, “So I just kept going at it.”
Joining Barrett as Tigers to score 20 or more points in the contest was team captain Mark Mitchell, who poured in 23 points to make for his 12th game scoring 20 or more points this season and his seventh game doing so in SEC play.
The pair combined for 51 of Missouri’s 73 points to push the Tigers out of an early 12-2 deficit that sparked thoughts of panic. Mitchell and Barrett dispelled those thoughts with a consistent scoring presence and drove Missouri’s second-half offense to 61.5% from the field and 50% from 3-point range.
“They found what they got going, what they wanted, they went to it,” Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said. “We didn't stop it.”
Thanks to the star duo, Missouri found its bread and butter, winning 73-69 to move to 19-9 on the season and 9-6 in Southeastern Conference play. The Tigers will next travel to Mississippi State to play the Rebels at noon Saturday.