Mizzou's Dennis Gates Issues Public Challenge For Anthony Robinson II

Amid the Missouri Tigers' 13-3 start to the 2024-25 regular season, one of the clear standouts has been the development of sophomore guard Anthony Robinson II.

Robinson showed strong flashes of his potential in his freshman campaign, but it was in limited minutes and on a Missouri team that was unable to notch a win once the SEC schedule began. With some departures from upperclassmen, he received the starting point guard position and has done wonders with it this season.

Following a 75-66 win over the Vanderbilt Commodores Saturday afternoon, Robinson is averaging 10.6 points, 3.5 rebounds, four assists and 2.2 steals per game on 50/37.5/82% shooting splits. In that win, he put up 15 points, eight assists and threes steals on 4-of-4 shooting from the field.

Despite looking strong on the stat sheet, coach Dennis Gates wasn't entirely pleased with Robinson's performance after the game. Earlier in the season he challenged the sophomore to work on his communication, but this new issue is entirely different.

Gates wants Robinson to stop concentrating on his mistakes.

The less impressive stat for Robinson's performance was his free-throw shooting, in which he shot just 5-of-9. Those missed opportunities clearly frustrated him, known by his mannerisms and the way he played through the second half. In turn, it prevented him from finishing off the game in the right way.

"This is a public challenge to Ant Robinson, because I'm gonna call his mom after this and tell her the same thing," Gates said. "Ant's next stage of growth is ignoring his mistakes, his missed free throws, because he makes it so visible, and then that distracts him from executing the next game plan."

Gates made it known that Robinson's growth has been obvious. He's a cornerstone of the program that has quickly developed into a high-impact player on both ends of the floor, but he's always going to present challenges to him to help make him even better.

Allowing negative thought and anger has held him back before, and even if the Tigers were able to close out the Commodores, something like that could hurt their chances in a game down the road. Every game is going to matter in tough SEC schedule, so it's likely in Gates' best interest to call it out sooner rather than later.

"You got to look past the negative, Ant," Gates told the guard. "I'm going to talk call his mom and set up a meeting and continue to talk to him about the same thing, because he's valuable. But how can you be valuable if you're concentrating on the mistake? So in essence, I've been working with Ant on this."

Right after, Gates turned to Robinson and asked: "You got to recover from what?"

Robinson agreed and responded with, "My mistakes."

"You got to recover from his mistakes. And ultimately, that's, that's what will allow him to continue to grow in the direction that he's he's growing in," Gates said.

Robinson quickly accepted and accomplished Gates' previous ask of improving his talking in practice and games, so time will what this new ask brings.