Missouri hammers UA women; Dykes displeased

Arkansas senior Alecia Cooley loses control of the ball while being defended by Missouri junior Bir Porter (left) and senior Lianna Doty on Monday, Jan. 23, 2017, at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.
Arkansas senior Alecia Cooley loses control of the ball while being defended by Missouri junior Bir Porter (left) and senior Lianna Doty on Monday, Jan. 23, 2017, at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.

FAYETTEVILLE -- Missouri struck quickly and Arkansas had no answer Monday night.

Senior guard Sierra Michaelis scored a game-high 23 points as the Tigers routed Arkansas 60-46 in SEC women's play in front of an announced crowd 822 at Walton Arena.

Missouri (14-7, 4-3 SEC) raced out to an 8-0 lead, and the Tigers were never seriously threatened the rest of the way, building a 20-point lead twice in the second half.

"Sierra has been a great scorer for us," Missouri Coach Robin Pingeton said. "She can score in a variety of ways. When she's on, you have a feeling it might be a good night for you."

Michaelis added nine rebounds as Missouri outrebounded Arkansas 43-31. The Tigers had 16 offensive rebounds and 13 second-chance points.

Pingeton said victories at Arkansas have been tough to come by for Missouri.

"This has really been a tough place for us to play," she said. "We've had some really tough losses over the years. There's no such thing as an easy win."

Arkansas Coach Jimmy Dykes said the loss ended a really tough day for him that started off bad and concluded just as badly.

"My day started out this morning at 6 o'clock with a flat tire, then we had a flat tire at 6 p.m. when we started the game as well," Dykes said.

Arkansas (13-7, 2-5) had no answer for Missouri's quick start and trailed 13-2 and 21-6 in the first quarter.

Dykes, now 43-39 in his third season, said his team came out with no energy.

"It just wasn't our day," he said. "Our energy level was low to start the game. It's hard to explain because we've been playing really well. We've been playing with a lot of energy, but it just wasn't there tonight."

Missouri's switching zone defense caused Arkansas problems the entire game. The Razorbacks' top four leading scorers -- Jessica Jackson, Malica Monk, Keiryn Swenson and Jailyn Mason -- who entered the game averaging a combined 43.6 points per game, scored 12 Monday night. Arkansas shot just 32.7 percent from the floor (17 of 52) and was just 4 of 15 from the three-point line.

For Jackson, who leads the team in scoring at 15.3 points per game, it was the fourth consecutive game in which she scored fewer than 10 points after opening the season with 15 consecutive games in which she scored at least 10.

"We've got to get her going again," Dykes said. "It's going to hard for us to win a lot of ballgames if we don't start getting some point production out of her. Part of that is on our young ladies. If you want to shoot the basketball, you've got to get in the gym to shoot the basketball. There's no other way around it.

"We have a two-hour practice or a 90-minute practice, and we can't shoot enough in a practice. We've got a beautiful $32 million practice facility that needs to be used a whole lot more than it's being used, I can tell you that."

Arkansas next plays at LSU on Sunday.

Sports on 01/24/2017

Upcoming Events