Crim: QND graduate Schreacke to have major hand in whether Mizzou sustains success

QUINCY — While it remains to be seen how the University of Missouri women’s basketball team will ultimately fare this season, it’s clear Abbey Schreacke will play an important role.

The Quincy Notre Dame product has been impressive off the bench for the Tigers, who ran their record to 5-2 last Friday by dismantling Arkansas-Little Rock 78-49, their fourth straight win.

The 6-foot sophomore is second on the team in scoring (12.4 ppg) behind fellow guard Grace Slaughter. She had a career-high 26 points against Western Illinois and a 19-point effort against Saint Louis University in back-to-back games before Little Rock, both representing team highs.

Schreacke made 8 of 14 shots from 3-point range against the Leathernecks at Western Hall and 5 of 8 against Saint Louis at Mizzou Arena. She is shooting 44 percent from the field and 48 percent from 3-point range overall while playing the fourth-most minutes at 21 per game.

Notably, she’s among the national leaders in 3-pointers made with 25 and her 3-point percentage is among the best in the Southeastern Conference.

Predictably, Schreacke downplayed her early-season performance.

“I shot pretty well … but it’s just because my teammates found me,” she told the Columbia Missourian after the Tigers’ 112-59 win over Saint Louis. “I’m just thankful that I have good teammates that were sharing the ball.”

This after she averaged 7.6 points and 2.6 rebounds per game while appearing in all 30 games as a freshman, including two starts. She finished second best in the SEC by shooting nearly 59 percent from the field in league play.

The Tigers will face Syracuse on Monday afternoon in the inaugural Emerald Coast Classic on the campus of Northwest Florida State College in Destin, Fla. They will play either Creighton or Wichita State on Tuesday. That will be followed by six straight non-conference home games.

“I think this team has a really high ceiling, you know?” Missouri coach Robin Pingeton told the Columbia Daily Tribune after the win over Saint Louis, the reigning WNIT champion.

“I think we’re still figuring out, how do we put them in a position offensively to play to their strengths, and continue to share the ball? I think that’s just huge for our team. We’ve got a lot of players that have the ability to score, and just to surrender that for ‘we over me (mentality),’ — I think if they can do that, they’ve got a chance to do something pretty fun this year.”

How the season plays out remains to be seen. Mizzou is fresh off a disappointing 11-19 campaign that saw it lose 14 of 16 SEC games, including its last 11, to finish in the league cellar.

This team is a mixture of old and new. The roster features nine returning players (including three who were sidelined last season because of injuries or transfer issues), four transfers and two freshmen.

Slaughter, a 2023 McDonald’s All-American and Missouri Gatorade Player of the Year while at Grain Valley, is back for her second season after being named to the All-SEC freshman team. She is averaging a team-best 15 points per game.

Senior forward Laniah Randle, a 5-foot-11 transfer from Southern Illinois, is scoring at an 11-point clip. She has been joined up front by Angelique Ngalakulondi, a 6-foot-2 graduate student who was injured eight games into last season after transferring from UMass.

Guard is a strength for the Tigers. In addition to Slaughter and Schreacke, Nyah Wilson, a transfer from New Mexico, and junior returnee Ashton Judd have had double-digit scoring outputs.

Still, Mizzou suffered unexpected losses against Norfolk State — a game the Tigers paid the visitors $25,000 to play — and at Vermont in the opener. Neither opponent had ever beaten an SEC team.

The SEC will once again be a gauntlet. Mizzou, picked to finish 15^th in the 16-team league this season, will open conference play Jan. 2 at home against defending national champion and top-ranked South Carolina.

Four SEC teams — South Carolina, Texas, LSU and Oklahoma — are ranked in the top nine in the Associated Press poll. Three others — Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama — are in the top 25, with Tennessee lurking just outside.

It has been six seasons since the Tigers went to the NCAA Tournament. Before then, Pingeton and Missouri had made four straight NCAA appearances.

“You know, we all want the end result, which is a championship; we all want a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. That scoreboard is really, really important,” Pingeton, in the last year of her contract, said during the SEC Tipoff.

“But I also don’t want to shy away from the fact that sometimes when you go through hard times, those are where you really grow the most.”