Tamar Bates sat down for his postgame press conference with his 2-year-old daughter on his lap.
Kansas coach Bill Self, mere minutes earlier, had just called Bates "the best player in the game, hands down."
For good reason, too.
Bates had just dropped 29 points on the No. 1-ranked Jayhawks, including four in the final two minutes as the Tigers staved off a comeback and claimed a shocking, 76-67 Border War win on Sunday at Mizzou Arena. The fans flooded the court. Bates, surely, was the hero most of those gold-and-black clad Tiger fans wanted an up-close glimpse at; to revel in a marvelous Missouri moment with.
Not many will forget the moments that shaped Sunday's stunning result.
And behind the scenes, there was room for dad and daughter to share in one more.
"Look at the end of the day, this is the part I look at. I see how (Bates) fathers his daughter, and it's beautiful to see," Dennis Gates said. "And I think when you put things in perspective, this is what it's about. It's not about anything else."
How Tamar Bates has earned that moment; that praise.
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Nobody outside of those Mizzou Arena halls would have predicted with a straight face that a win over the western foe was in the cards. Sure, the Tigers may hang around. But beat them? Beat Bill Self? Beat No. 1?
Well, Gates had some motivation.
Dajuan Harris, a Columbia local and Rock Bridge High state champion who has played point guard for Kansas since 2019, almost dared it out of the Tigers. He was asked midweek about the rivalry and how hostile it was returning home.
"Getting ready for it feels different, but I just really ain't feeling it," Harris said Friday, two days before visiting Mizzou Arena. … "Because here we kind of blew them out both times, and when we went down there the first time, we blew them out. … Hopefully it's a great game and it's a back-and-forth game, because I want to have a great game."
Think the Tigers heard that?
"I repeatedly watched Dajuan Harris' press conference, and he said he wanted to see what Mizzou Arena looked like," Gates said postgame. "Well, he did. He did. He saw what it looked like. But in looking at it, our players saw what it looked like."
Bates didn't just see Mizzou Arena in full flow.
He made it so.
"He just wanted to win," Gates said, "and that's how he practiced."
The senior guard swished a 3 from the wing less than two minutes into the game to give MU its first lead — a lead that, as it turned out, the Tigers never gave back up. Moments later, he peeled back for a mid-range jumper, made that one too, and then turned to the face of KU guard Zeke Mayo and let him know all the way back to the opposite end of the court.
The crowd was on its feet. Mizzou was immediately giving Kansas the game Harris wished for.
And Bates — often the lone bright spot on MU's 2023-24 disaster — continued to have his hand in just about everything.
He stepped in front of a second-half pass from KU forward KJ Adams that would have made a defensive back over in the football facility proud, hurtled up the court and gave Mizzou a 20-point lead.
Bates kept scoring at all three levels, including the layup that restored a nine-point cushion with 75 seconds left to play and all but killed any chance of a KU comeback. His perfect trip at the foul line with 30 seconds left — part of a 9-of-9 day at the line — erased any lingering doubt.
Mizzou had led by 23. KU had cut into the deficit and made it a two-point game late.
How many times were there games like that last season — when Bates' big days ended up being but a sideshow?
The Tigers changed that Sunday. Bates was 9-of-15 from the field to lead all scorers.
"We just stayed together. We stayed connected. I mean, we felt like a dip in our energy, so we just upped our communication on the bench," Bates said. "Like, nobody had that look on their face of defeat. Nobody was necessarily worried. We just knew that we had to respond. They're a good team, like, as much as you know we scout and as good as defense we played, we knew they were going to eventually make a run. It was just about how we responded."
"And we were able to do that. And I mean, at the end of the day, we just wanted to find a way to win, no matter how pretty or ugly it was."
According to ESPN sportscaster Tom Hart, Bates is the third player with 25 or more points and five or more steals against the No. 1 team in the nation in the past 50 seasons.
Bates said Friday that he'd "be a fool" to call Border War just another game. As the crowd swarmed the team on Norm Stewart Court, after all that fight, the guard was proven right. He said he petitioned with the MU faithful to keep that same presence through January and February.
There's no telling where Missouri will go from here. The Tigers have had a star since the beginning of last season, and on Sunday Bates got some deserved flowers.
Not that the guard, daughter in his lap after a job well done, ever needed them.
"My mission, my goal, my preparation this entire week wasn't to necessarily be the best player on the floor. It was just to win the game," Bates said. "And tonight I was able to score in certain spots and take advantage of certain matchups when I could, but I just did what the game called for."
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How Missouri basketball's Tamar Bates wrote himself into Border War lore
