COLUMBIA, Mo. — Everything was different inside Mizzou Arena on Thursday afternoon. It was not Saturday night. No network television trucks were docked in the back of the building. The TV cameras and hot lights were all gone.
It was just another sedate gymnasium with the distinctive echoes of squeaking sneakers and thumping basketballs.
It was another late-season practice for the Missouri men's basketball team, prepping for another big Saturday showdown with another highly ranked opponent. It was another dress rehearsal where Ricardo Ratliffe, Marcus Denmon, Kim English, Mike Dixon, Phil and Matt Pressey and Steve Moore would use their valuable court time to keep this miracle season going strong.
But this is not their story.
This is about "the other guys."
It's 3:45 p.m., and the most important 2½ hours of the day are about to begin for "the other guys." They love practice. They want practice. They need practice. They are addicted to practice.
"We're transfers, so we have to sit out the whole year," said Keion Bell, a 6-foot-3 shooting guard who transferred from Pepperdine. "We have no games, so to us, we have to treat practices like they are our games. If we let one (play) slip or let one (practice game) get away from us, we get pretty upset."
Come on, we're talking about practice, right?
"Well actually, it's a lot bigger than that for us," Bell said. "If we lose a drill or a game, it usually takes us all day to let it go. We're pretty miserable when we lose."
There are so many reasons why this year's Tigers are fascinating. Who doesn't love the surprise that the 22-2 Tigers have pulled off, climbing to a No. 4 national ranking?
But "the other guys" are a big part of this story, too. Bell, Earnest Ross, Jabari Brown and Danny Feldman all transferred from other Division I programs last year and were forced to sit out the 2011-12 season. But they come to practice every day, playing the role of the scout team. They work just as hard as everyone else, yet on game day, they take off their sneakers and put on street clothes, sit at the end of the bench watching, cheering and wishing they could get in the game.
They are like soldiers going through endless war-game drills for battles that will never come.
"I don't necessarily look at it that way," Bell said. "The way I look at it is we get to help make these guys better. A lot of schools don't get to go against a scout team this good. So if we can make them better, seeing them win kind of is a victory for us."
There aren't many scout teams in Division I basketball that can boast the talent of Missouri's practice squad. Bell has already scored 1,365 points in college ball, averaging over 18 points a game at Pepperdine. Earnest Ross was the SEC's most improved scorer last year, leading Auburn in scoring (13.1 ppg) and rebounding. Jabari Brown was a five-star recruit at Oregon. Danny Feldman, 6-foot-9, transferred from Ivy League Columbia and shoots 3-pointers like a Euro big man.
Laurence Bowers has the best seat in the house every practice. He's rehabbing his injured knee, and every day he stands on the sidelines watching the guys he used to play with go at it against the guys he will play with next season.
"I don't know who to root for, either," Bowers said. "I mean, these are my boys who are playing right now. But these guys over here are going to be my teammates next year. I'm just stuck in the middle."
It's actually kind of fun watching this, because the other guys turn practice into something rarely seen in college ball: evenly matched competition. Missouri's practices can turn into wars, particularly on those Wednesday and Thursday practices when Haith lets them go hard at each other.
"It really gets real competitive," Denmon said. "I think the team we work against in practice could win a lot of games in our conference."
On Tuesday night, Haith said practice was a battle. Guys were in each others faces. Egos demanded that individual games be raised to game-day levels.
How tough did it get?
"Well, I took a blow yesterday that might have knocked somebody else out," said Denmon with a sense of pride. "Keon got me. He elbowed me in my chin."
"Oh, I didn't throw an elbow," Bell said. "Well, not intentionally. I made a sweet spin move and I kinda caught Marcus on the chin and knocked him down."
Bell's grinning now as if he enjoyed accidentally nailing his buddy on the chin. But just to be clear, he wants you to know that he did help Denmon off the floor.
"But I made sure I scored the basket first before I helped him back up," Bell said, chuckling.
"The other guys" know that at least for this season, this is their basketball world. Practice is their game. This is a time to help their teammates win while developing some chemistry for the future. But it's also the toughest thing any of them have ever had to do in their basketball lives.
"It's a different feeling," Ross said. "It's something I've adjusted to. Our main focus is to get this year's team ready for games. But when we're playing together, every day we learn something more about each other. We're trying to set each other up for our sweet spots. I'm not saying everyone knows where each other's hot spot is, but we're getting used to each other pretty well."
All season long, Ross and "the other guys" have pulled off this trick without a hitch. The life of a scout-team player demands that mentality of accepting that the battle will never come no matter how hard you train.
"I've been pretty cool with it all season," Ross said. "But I have to say last Saturday night was tough. Sitting there and watching that KU experience was something that really hurt. That was actually one of the first games where I was thinking, 'Man I really wish I was in this.'"
But he did what he has done all year: he found a seat, watched and waited.
"It's OK," Ross said. "I missed the Kansas game, but it only makes me more hungry to play again next year in the SEC. So it won't be Kansas. But we'll be able to play against the likes of Kentucky or Florida. There will be other opportunities next year to play in full arenas against great teams in the SEC. But it's okay. I'll just have to wait."
