Behind the games that shaped the 1993-1994 Missouri men's basketball team's brotherhood
There was a moment of clarity in 1993 for the Missouri men's basketball team.
Lamont Frazier remembers. His 1-0 Tigers entered Fayetteville to take on MU's future SEC rival Arkansas. The stage was set. The lights were bright.
But Missouri wasn't ready. Arkansas won 120-68.
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It was a thorough embarrassment. That result didn't define a season, but it did define a resolve.
"How did the people that, one, traveled to that game, two, that watched that game, three, that held us to a higher standard, how did that make them feel?" Frazier remembers asking himself.
Frazier was a senior that year, the 1993-1994 men's basketball season. It had anything but an auspicious start, but finished as one of the best seasons in Missouri men's basketball history.
This is how the brotherhood the 1993-1994 MU basketball team carried was shaped by some of its most important victories.
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'Kinda like the chicken or the egg'
The 93-94 Missouri men's basketball team has its own renown.
The Tigers finished with a 28-4 record and at No. 5 overall in the Associated Press poll. What made one of Norm Stewart's best teams so notable, however, was its 14-0 finish in the Big 8 and a berth in the Elite Eight.
That record doesn't just happen. That Tigers team understands that when it looks back 30 years later.
"When you're on a team like that, you really probably don't achieve that success without having kind of a unique bond," then-MU freshman Chip Walther said. "It's kinda like the chicken or the egg. You have a unique bond and that leads to success, or you have that success and then you have this lasting bond."
That bond began the year prior when MU made the 1993 NCAA Tournament as a No. 10 seed in the West region. the Tigers fell to No. 7-seeded Temple in the first-round but set a foundation for the upcoming season with seven senior players.
That senior foundation needed to show its mettle immediately.
The 52-point loss to Arkansas threatened to derail what the Tigers aimed to achieve. However, it didn't because of the bond the team carried.
Frazier put it bluntly. After losing in what the team considered an embarrassing loss to the Razorbacks, something shifted. The team utilized one result that led to winning streaks of nine-straight games and 15-straight games.
"From that point forward, it was a methodical attack on everybody we played," Frazier said. "No guy ever took a day off. I mean, there were guys that were hurt that shouldn't have been playing because they had one objective in mind. We are responsible for people's happiness. And that's the way that group flowed."
The shift in Missouri
Frazier is now a basketball coach at Rogers High School in Arkansas. When he golfs with others, they'll recall that Missouri loss to Arkansas.
It doesn't bother Frazier.
"That was probably the best thing that could have happened to us," he said.
Once Missouri returned to Columbia, the team dynamic changed.
"We went back the next day in practice and there wasn't a whole lot of friendliness going on," Frazier said. "It was guys getting after each other because we knew what we had done and we knew we were better than what we had showed."
It was a proper momentum shift in a Tigers team that needed it. That shift would pay off just five games later in a game that would shape the 1993-1994 season.
The 'Epic' against Illinois
After wins over Jackson State, Arkansas State, Southern Methodist and Coppin State, Missouri traveled to St. Louis. It was time to measure Braggin' Rights.
Missouri took on No. 19 Illinois in what became one of the best games in the Illini-Tigers rivalry.
"That was sort of, in a word, sort of epic." Walther said. "It really wasn't like any game. I'd never really been around that. That's probably the single greatest kind of win."
Missouri prevailed 108-107 in three overtimes. It was an all-time classic.
Walther recalls Kiwane Garris, who played 51 minutes that night and scored 31 points, missing two free throws in the second overtime which forced the third.
"That seemingly, you just assumed, would ice the game," Walther said. "And he missed them and gave us another life. It was really, really pretty incredible."
Four Tigers had fouled out in the game, leaving Coach Stewart to play some of his freshmen to try and pull out the win. They did.
That win was a result of Missouri's team makeup. The Tigers, Frazier would put it, didn't have star power. They were comprised of good players who, when combined together on the court, formulated a great team.
"You just had a group of guys that come in, and they worked their tails off," Frazier said. "Day after day after day, they had learned how to work through the process of being with Coach Stewart and what it meant for him to build the University of Missouri, and be a staple for the University of Missouri. Not only the University of Missouri but also the state of Missouri."
The different mindset in Lawrence
Frazier recalled Missouri as a team that, well, wasn't too smart. The Tigers didn't have a great memory that year, but that paid off.
Missouri has swept Kansas in a single year 20 times. That number shrinks considering Missouri and Kansas have been playing basketball since 1907.
Across the 105 years that MU and KU have played a series of basketball games in the same season, the Tigers won every game that year 20 times. Kansas, which leads the overall series 175-95, has swept Missouri much more than that.
In this case, Missouri forgot the past.
The Tigers' seniors did remember walking into Allen Fieldhouse three seasons prior, all losses. In 1994, with resolve from the Arkansas loss coupled with the win over Illinois, it was a different feeling.
"We were walking into that place, and we had only lost maybe one or two games, I think one game, at that point." Frazier said. "It wasn't about what we had, what we had to do to beat them. It was more about what they were gonna have to do to beat us."
Missouri swept Kansas that season, first at the Hearnes Center 79-67 and later in Lawrence 81-74. MU lived up to its billing as a team that was greater than the sum of its parts.
Frazier, eventual NBA-player Melvin Booker, Jevon Crudup, Mark Atkins and Kelly Thames may have played the most, but Walther noted one star didn't shine brighter than the others.
Everyone had a reason to be on the roster.
"Everybody had a particular role in that," Walther said. "I was young, so wasn't playing as much as the other guys, but certainly had a role that helped the team. I just really feel like individually we didn't necessarily wow you, but collectively, we became great. I think that's something that should be admired about that team."
30 years later
The record books are as they are. Missouri's 1993-1994 season will forever live as one of the most successful seasons in program history.
But, to this day, it's something the team looks back on often and fondly.
It wasn't just the results. Sure, Missouri beating Kansas would make the drinks colder, the food tastes better and the sleep is easier. But, for the players who took the court, the fondness comes from the admiration they have for each other.
"Those were some of the toughest dudes that I, I've ever been around, some of the toughest dudes that I ever practiced with," Frazier said. "There's a lot of guys that were on that team that publicly did not get a lot of credit, but those guys that publicly didn't get a lot of credit, every day they laced them up and they went in and they enjoyed the work that they put in."
The team has gone its separate ways. But, the constant contact remains in the modern age.
The brotherhood hasn't faded, and won't. A team reunion a few years ago proved this. Some players hadn't seen each other in years. They wouldn't have known.
"It could have been 25 years ago," Walther said. "Not much had changed because of that common connection you had. So that continues to be sort of the biggest takeaway. I believe really, to my core, that's how we were exactly able to achieve that."
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Behind the games that shaped the 93-94 Missouri men's basketball team's brotherhood
