COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) – Finding the positives in a 29-point road drubbing can challenge even the most veteran coaches. Considering how far it has fallen, Binghamton’s 88-59 loss to No. 21 Missouri on Sunday may at least represent a stepping-stone, according to coach Mark Macon.
The Bearcats (0-5) were facing their first ranked team since 2010, when the school saw the departure of former coach Kevin Broadus on the heels of recruiting violations and the dismissal of six players for legal troubles and team and university rules’ violations.
“We’re looking at progress,” said Macon, a former Temple star. “And we did have progress. They’re like jackrabbits and we’re like tortoises. And that’s what you have to be in a game against these guys. You’ve got to slow the game down and make things simple.”
Ben Dickinson, who played 37 minutes, led Binghamton with 15 points.
“He’s that kind of kid you want five of,” Macon said.
Jimmy Gray added 13 points for the Bearcats, while Chris Longoria added 12 and Robert Mansell 11. Binghamton plays without a senior on its 15-man roster that has 10 freshmen or sophomores.
Kim English, a converted shooting guard forced by a teammate’s season-ending injury to play out of position at power forward, scored a career-high 29 points for Missouri (6-0). The Big 12’s leading 3-point shooter hit 7 of 10 from behind the arc. His six 3s and 22 first-half points helped the Tigers to a 49-31 lead.
English, a 6-foot-6 senior, entered the game hitting 60 percent of his 3-pointers. English is the Tigers’ starting power forward after Laurence Bowers’ season-ending knee injury in the preseason. English’s previous career-high was 26 against Chattanooga in 2009.
Missouri entered the game shooting 51.3 percent from the field. The Tigers shot nearly 55 percent from the field Sunday, hitting 62.1 percent in the first half.
Ricardo Ratliffe added 18 points and five rebounds for Missouri, and was 7 of 7 from the field to build on his Big 12-leading 65 percent field goal percentage entering the game.
Marcus Denmon scored 13 points and Michael Dixon added 11 for the Tigers. Point guard Phil Pressey didn’t attempt a shot and went scoreless but had 11 assists, five rebounds and three steals. That’s the most assists by a Tiger since December 2010, and two off the school record.
English scored eight of the Tigers’ first 10 points as they took a 10-2 lead in the game’s first 4 minutes. That deficit was as close as Binghamton would get the rest of the way. The Bearcats, who have also lost this season to Colgate and Cornell, trailed by as many as 37 points in the second half.
English topped his career-high within the first 5 minutes of the second half. He went to the bench with more than 12 minutes remaining and Missouri ahead by 30 points, returning briefly once the game was out of hand.
Excluding English’s contributions, Missouri was just 4 of 22 from 3-point range.
Sunday’s rout follows impressive wins over California and Notre Dame for the CBE Classic title the previous week in Kansas City. Under first-year coach Frank Haith, Missouri is off to its best start since 2006, former coach Mike Anderson’s first season. The announced attendance of 5,037, though, was a season-low at Mizzou Arena.
The Bearcats are in rebuilding mode after a 2009-10 season that led to the departure of the school’s longtime athletics director and an outside review which found that Broadus circumvented standards to get a player enrolled while also lobbying for a player’s grade to be changed. Broadus had his contract bought out by Binghamton for $1.2 million in October 2010, a year after he was suspended by the school.
“The program is going at a great pace progressing forward,” Macon said. “We just have to continue to do that. I think we have some great student-athletes in. And we can only move forward. We can’t look back and look that way. We can only move forward.”
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Alan Scher Zagier can be reached at http://twitter.com/azagier
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