Mizzou beats Cal, 68-67, on Shannon Dowell layup
In a back-and-forth contest down the stretch, Mizzou had two players to turn to.
It went to Grace Slaughter for a late 3-pointer from the corner. Then the Tigers turned to Shannon Dowell for the game winner in a 68-67 victory against Cal in the SEC/ACC Challenge at Mizzou Arena on Thursday.
With Cal in front by a point and 14 seconds left to play, the Tigers were hounding an inbounds pass from the Golden Bears. After Mizzou fouled twice on the last two Cal possessions, Jayla Smith poked away a steal and dished it ahead to Dowell. But some confusion from Dowell kept the Tigers from attacking right off the steal.
“When we got the steal, Jayla threw the ball up to me ahead and I’m looking at coach thinking she’s gonna call time out, confused whether I should just take it,” Dowell said. “She ended up calling timeout. Which was good. Bit of confusion on my part.”
“She said the confusion, I saw it,” Mizzou coach Kellie Harper said. “That’s why I called the time out. You know, after I did it, I wasn’t sure it was the right decision to be honest with you. But if there’s any indecision with the ball handler, I feel like you got to make that call.”
So the Tigers called the timeout and drew up a play for Dowell.
As the inbounder, Dowell found Smith, who dished it right back. Dowell worked around a Slaughter ghost screen and found her way to the basket wide open.
So wide open it could have caused an issue.
“It’s one of those shots that’s just so wide open that you really got to focus even more to make it,” Dowell said.
“We went small to try to spread them out a little bit,” Harper said. “And we knew we were going to get Shannon on a downhill opportunity. But we needed a little bit more interference. That’s where Grace came in. So we got Grace in there with some interference that caused a split-second of indecision by their defender, which gave Shannon an open look.”
“It was almost so open, I’m glad she admitted that, because I was a little nervous,” Harper added. “It was very open. It’s one of those that you just, ‘Oh my gosh, make the layup.’ You could see it happening.”
The layup was the conclusion of a 25-point, seven-rebound performance for Dowell, who has been one of the offensive engines of a team that has won four straight games.
But she didn’t do it on her own in the end.
With Cal leading 65-63 with a minute to go, the Tigers were desperate for an opening. Nothing seemed to become available against the stingy Cal defense, but Chloe Sotell fired a cross-court pass to Slaughter as the shot clock ticked down. Slaughter side-stepped a closing defender and hit a 3 from the corner that took about as friendly a bounce as the Tigers have had this season.
“I could hear the bench behind me just counting down,” Slaughter said. “So, just knowing that I had to get it off, but that I had time. So, you know, be in a hurry, but not rushed. And I’ve practiced that shot with my coaches a lot. So I felt confident being able to get it up.”
Those were the final points for Slaughter, who ended with a double-double of 21 points and 10 boards.
In the Tigers’ four-game winning streak, Slaughter has 81 points and 39 rebounds.
Gaining momentum
The win marked four in a row for Mizzou after a loss to Troy. The Tigers went to the WBCA Showcase and beat Washington State, then beat Bradley and Northwestern in the Fort Myers Tip-Off.
“The three games previous were all very similar style opponents,” Harper said. “They played actually the same, they ran the same offensive principles. They guarded very similarly. So I thought we went in those and handled it. We guarded the same thing for three straight games. So I thought that was, timing wise, it couldn’t have been more perfect.”
But Cal was a stark change. A vicious focus on the defensive end and holding teams down made the Golden Bears a very different opponent.
“This game was very different going into this,” Harper said. “We had some questions whether how we were going to play. They look very different than the teams we just played. We handled those, but could we handle this? And the biggest question in my mind was, were we going to be able to score enough points to get the win?”
Mizzou got just enough. But all you need is one more point than the other team.
Harper spent the early part of the season challenging her team to fight harder, to show more grit and to take accountability when on the floor. She challenged them to play with more mental toughness.
Cal was able to get the Tigers out of their usual game plan. The Tigers hadn’t attempted fewer than 15 3-pointers in a game. They took just 13 Thursday night.
“It was them, it was not us. We wanted to shoot them, we just didn’t have any open ones,” Harper said.
But in the end, the Tigers came out on the better end. Because across the past couple of weeks, the Tigers have shifted, they have gained some early season momentum.
“I think Grace’s shot to put us up one, man that was so big,” Harper said. “But they scored again, right? So the back and forth, we could have easily folded. We could have said, ‘Woe is me.’ We could have started taking bad shots. And we didn’t. We didn’t. We made big shots. You don’t just go out and win because you say, ‘I want to win. Let’s go.’ You have to make plays. And Grace hit the 3, Jayla hit a jumper. We got some stops and we went and earned the win down the stretch.”
Stats
Mizzou shot 25-of-59 (42.4 percent) from the field, 5-of-13 (38.5 percent) from 3 and 13-of-14 (92.9 percent) from the free-throw line.
Cal shot 28-of-62 (45.2 percent) overall, 7-of-24 (29.2 percent) from deep and 4-of-6 (66.7 percent) from 3.
No Tiger other than Slaughter and Dowell scored more than eight points, Smith added six rebounds.
Mizzou out rebounded Cal 39-31. Cal won points in the paint 40-32, second-chance points 12-7 and fast break points 6-2.
Mizzou lead 14-12 after one quarter and 33-32 at halftime. Cal led 55-50 after three quarters.
Post-game press conference
Watch the full video of Harper, Slaughter and Dowell.
Up next
Mizzou (8-2) will remain at Mizzou Arena to host SIUE at 2 p.m. Sunday.