The Morning According To Us: A Proper English Lesson

Mike Anderson made the absolute right call down the stretch against Marquette on Sunday.

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Kim English, moments before he became a household name in Missouri.

Missouri coach Mike Anderson can talk all he wants about his "gut feeling" that a bench-warming freshman would be the one to ice yesterday's game. But there's actually nothing instinctual about putting Kim English, a 65 percent free throw shooter, on the free throw line with five seconds to play in a tied elimination game: this English kid is a freak. Any coach is smart to recognize as much.

Last summer, the true freshman took to sleeping in Missouri's gym. True story: he was told on a recruiting trip that the Tigers had 24/7 access to the gym. English moved to campus, and even though he lived only a half mile from the court, he set up leather chairs in the locker room, slept in those in fits and starts, and pretty much shot hoops the rest of the time. That's how much he wanted to play this season.

Other players never saw him in street clothes —always basketball shorts. He dribbled a basketball everywhere he went. A season of these antics and senior DeMarre Carroll now calls English a "basketball guru." (He's slept on occasion at the gym with English.) The freshman has recruited four or five others to his obsessive cause, too.

Yesterday, after Missouri's J.T. Tiller drove to the lane with six seconds left, was fouled and landed on his sore wrist, Coach Anderson could have chosen guard Marcus Denmon to shoot the free throws Tiller couldn't. Denmon is 80 percent from the line.

But Denmon hadn't scored 15 points in a four and a half minute flurry in the first half; Denmon hadn't torched Cornell for 13 points off the bench Friday. English did this—and did it after a month-long scoring slump in which he went four for 27 from the field, and zero for 13 from deep. None of that mattered now, and Anderson could see it in English's eyes. So he put in the bench-warming freshman who shot 65 percent from the line.

It was a brilliant move. It's just that it has taken a season to place that brilliance in context.

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