Last night, Missouri kicked off its season with a 80-77 home loss to Sam Houston State in the first round of the Preseason NIT. You may be familiar with game theory, which has little application to college basketball. If not, don’t worry about it, because what matters to this contest is “one game theory”. That’s the idea that one shouldn’t base a judgment on a player or team on just one game because anything can happen in that small of a sample.

For instance, on December 30, 1999, a Wright State team that would eventually finish 13-18 beat Michigan State, who would win the national championship later that season.

And on November 19, 2004, Santa Clara, who finished 15-16, beat North Carolina, who would also win a title at season’s end.

Never mind that MSU played Wright State without Mateen Cleaves and UNC played Santa Clara without Ray Felton and in both of those games the heavy favorite was on the road. Work with me here. Just because Sam Houston only beat one RPI top 150 team last season and lost two of its top three scorers to graduation, doesn’t mean this has to be the end of the world for Quin Snyder’s bunch.

I mean Coach Snyder’s bunch.

                           FG    3pt  FT   Reb
                      Min  M-A   M-A  M-A  O-T   A F S TO BLK Pts
Marshall Brown         36  7-10  1-1  5-6  1-4   0 1 3  1  0   20
Result: Loss. Sam Houston St. 80, Missouri 77

Might as well look to the future and Brown is it for Missouri. The sophomore had a solid game in easily getting a career high in minutes. If he can manage to pry the ball away from Thomas Gardiner a little more, maybe the Tigers’ offense could be respectable.

Gardiner heaved five three point attempts (making two) for Missouri, notable because last season Gardiner (53-196, 27.0%) was the second-worst three-point shooter in the land among players with at least 150 attempts.