What caused scoring drought that extended Missouri basketball's losing streak to 16 games?

Dennis Gates trotted out a new lineup to begin the second half, and immediately saw the benefits.

MU guards Sean East II, Tamar Bates, Anthony Robinson II joined forwards Mabor Majak and Jesus Carralero Martin for Mizzou basketball, and the tide began to turn, setting in motion a dramatic race to the finish line ensued.

A 19-point deficit decreased to 12 after six minutes of game time. A 12-point hole dropped to single digits with five minutes remaining. Suddenly, it was a one-score game with a minute left on the game clock and a Missouri crowd on its feet daring itself to believe, allowing itself to hope — again.

“I think once we got into halftime, our guys regrouped,” Gates said postgame. “They understood, and we gave them solutions to the problem.”

Problem was, the Tigers started the half in a 19-point pit.

Another game has come and gone for the Tigers, and it’s another night without chalk in the win column. Ole Miss defeated Missouri 84-78 on Saturday at Mizzou Arena, handing Gates’ team its 16th straight loss.

Missouri has found all sorts of ways to go 0-16 in SEC action and 8-21 overall. The true blowouts have been few and far between. More often than not, the Tigers have been embroiled in back-and-forth battle when the games have reached their final quarter.

Saturday was different. The near-comeback started as a slow burn before jets burned and burned until they ran empty.

Beyond the loss, there’s typically one constant: The run that breaks the Tiger's back.

Against Ole Miss (20-9, 7-9 SEC), it was the seven-minute stretch in the first half without a field goal.

Splattered in there was a four-minute stretch without the ball touching the net, only abated by a 1-of-2 trip to the free throw line by East.

There were few signs of it before it arrived.

East had 11 points after the first nine minutes of the game. The Tigers had the lead at the first TV timeout. Once the drought was done, the Tigers outscored Ole Miss 52-39 in the second half.

Gates credited Ole Miss’ first-half defense, calling the Rebels a team “playing desperate basketball.”

That took the Tigers some time to figure out.

“They made a few good adjustments,” East said. “And we started making the adjustments in the second half with our kind of motion-action that we had going on, and that's what kind of worked in the second half for us.”

There were some bad breaks, Gates said postgame. The coach mentioned an in-and-out 3-point attempt from Nick Honor, and said toward the end of the first half that “our ball just wouldn’t go in.”

Gates pointed to Missouri’s season-long struggles to get to the line — which by game’s end had all but vanished as the Tigers shot 20 second-half free throws — contributed again to this particular scoring drought.

“That's part of ending droughts,” Gates said, “when you can see that ball go in from time to time on easy looks.”

And Gates mentioned the injuries — John Tonje, Caleb Grill, Kaleb Brown, Connor Vanover all were out Saturday.

East had 27 points against Ole Miss, his second-best scoring night of the year. Bates and Aidan Shaw added 13, and Honor had 12.

The other six players in the Missouri rotation combined for 13 points.

“That's what injuries provide, right?” Gates said. “It takes away not just one guy, not just two guys, but three primary guys who I know for a fact would be higher than that drop-off.”

But if there’s more — if there’s an in-game issue that Gates sees and is aware of, he wasn’t for sharing.

“I always start with myself. I don't ever put anything on the shoulders of my players. You know, we just got to watch the film to see what the reasons (were) tonight, but it's all different reasons, one way or another,” Gates said. “... Again, they did a great job defensively. They sealed the baseline a certain way but we were able to get them out of that by clearing out some things and putting our pieces in the right place, and I wish I would have (done) it a lot summer.

Missouri is on the brink of matching a century-old record.

The last time — and the only other time — the Tigers went winless in their conference slate was in 1908, when they played five league games in the Missouri Valley Conference.

The Tigers, with a home game against No. 11 Auburn on Tuesday and a trip to LSU on deck, are already locked in to the No. 14 seed in Nashville for the SEC Tournament.

If there’s going to be a win, it has to come soon.

“I wish the results were different,” Gates said. “Our guys deserve a win. Our program deserves a win. But something greater is happening, because we're being forged through a certain fire. And I don't know exactly what that is, you don't know what it is, but I'm excited to see what's to come. But our staff is giving their very best, and I'm gonna continue to do the same.”

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Missouri basketball has lost 16 in a row. Here's how the latest happened