Football thoughts
1. We've got to start today with giving some perspective to the season.
Yes, the College Football Playoff dream is dead. That really sucks.
I was someone who bought into the idea Mizzou would make it in the first 12-team field, too, and because of the expanded field, the non-playoff bowls mean less than they ever had before. They already had lost a lot of prestige after the creation of the CFP, but now the best non-playoff bowls are getting team No. 5 from the SEC or Big 10 instead of team No. 2-3.
But, especially with Brady Cook back and clearly willing to play hampered to get through these final couple of games of his college career, the Tigers have a more-than-realistic chance to win the final two games of the regular season and go into a bowl game 9-3 and most likely ranked again.
It's been a decade since the Tigers won 20 games across two seasons, so as disappointing as this year is, this stretch is still up there among the best in Tiger history.
I think at this point you're looking at the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tenn., or the Las Vegas Bowl.
CBS updated its bowl predictions yesterday and has the Tigers facing Michigan in the Music City Bowl. I know it's not the Cotton Bowl followup everyone was hoping for, but imagine being able to say the Tigers won 10 games in consecutive seasons and beat Ohio State and Michigan in consecutive bowls.
That's a pretty incredible couple of years for a team that catapults a program into a tier of competition it can use as a sell to continue recruiting at a very high level, which leads to better competition, which leads to better recruiting, it all spins up together from there.
ESPN's Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach both have Mizzou in the Las Vegas Bowl facing Arizona State or Washington. That's still fun for me, I haven't been to Vegas as an adult, cool trip, but definitely not the same as facing Michigan. Though beating Washington does still give you the "We beat a team in the previous year's championship" argument. And my best friend works on the Huskies' TV broadcast crew and could probably convince them to let him travel for a bowl game. I might be talking myself into rooting for the Vegas Bowl.
I get being disappointed, the hopes were exceedingly high for this year and the SEC road slate has just demolished then.
But I think when the Tigers got home from the Gasparilla Bowl to celebrate Christmas 2022 after losing 27-17 to Wake Forest and ending a fourth consecutive season at or below .500 while losing the fourth straight bowl the Tigers had made, if someone had told you Missouri would realistically win 20 regular-season games and add on a Cotton Bowl win against Ohio State and maybe another bowl win against one of the teams that played for the 2023 championship, you and everyone else would have been very excited.
2. Brady Cook continues to impress me.
Let's start with this, I was wrong. Sorry about that.
Everything I heard was Brady would be out the rest of the regular season, but I forgot to take into account how much that kid is willing to play through to be on the field for the Missouri Tigers.
And he came back with that extra tape on his wrist to have one of his best games of the season.
His 237 yards is behind only the 264 he had against Boston College, his 67.7 percent completion percentage was fourth highest this season and the highest against an SEC team, he finally hit the first deep ball to Marquis Johnson (slightly under-thrown, but still more than I expected from a guy coming off a throwing-wrist injury) and that throw to Luther Burden for the go-ahead touchdown would have gone down as the play of the season if the Tigers ended up with the win.
He did everything he needed to do. There was clearly a little extra pain involved, but at this point I don't think there's anything that is going to keep Brady off the field these final three games of his college career.
His legs looked fine, too, which was good to see. Not a great running day, there weren't really any built-in opportunities for him to run, but I think that's more because you don't want to put the wrist at extra risk getting hit in the open field. Plus why have him run at all when Nate Noel looks as good as he did.
3. Speaking of Nate Noel.
Wow, what a game. He's finally back to healthy and I think I had forgotten just how good he can look in the Tiger offense.
I've been clamoring for the Tigers to use Jamal Roberts more (and I'm shocked by him getting just the two-point conversion carry, like literally 0 carries in the stat sheet after how well he played against Alabama and Oklahoma? Really?) but Noel was clearly the man Saturday.
His 27 carries was a season high, his 150 yards was his second most this year and the first time he'd had more than 32 since before the Tigers' first bye week.
Kewan Lacy looked good in his series and helped the Tigers get on the board to start the comeback in the second half. I still don't think I would have burned his redshirt there, but I'm not a coach.
I still think the best option to help the team moving forward is to get Roberts, and now Lacy, a lot of carries through the final two games, but the team isn't going to give up and not play its best options just to get young guys some time. That's true across the board, not just in the running back room. So don't expect a ton more Daniel Blood, or Williams Nwaneri or whoever else that wasn't already a big part of the rotation.
The idea of getting more time for the young guys is good, and I'm on board with Roberts and Lacy because they've shown they are ready to compete at this level and can help the team through the final few games. But there's a reason Nwaneri hasn't played more than five snaps against an SEC team. His redshirt is still intact by the way, he played five snaps against South Carolina for his fourth appearance.
The team isn't giving up, the coaches are going to do everything they can to win three more games, and that means a lot of Noel and not a lot of extra time for the young guys.
4. The defense carried the team for weeks, but that's where the fault lies for the South Carolina loss.
I don't think I'm telling you guys anything you don't know with this one. There was a lot of weirdness with the refs, the coaching decisions weren't perfect, but that loss boils down to the defense being unable to cover receivers or make tackles.
The Tigers allowed seven plays of more than 20 yards, including five plays of more than 30 yards and two plays of more than 40 yards. I remember well the issues with the big passes early in the season, but the Tigers had been among the best in the country at explosive plays allowed coming into the week.
The Tigers have now allowed 37 plays of more than 20 yards this year, which is tied for 39th in the country. They've now allowed 20 plays of 30+ yards this year, which drops them all the way to a tie for 74th and they have given up nine plays of more than 40 yards, which ties them for 54th in the country.
This obviously isn't how stats work, but let's take out this week's totals and look at how Mizzou would rank.
At 30 plays of 20+ yards, the Tigers would be second behind only Texas. At 15 plays of 30+ yards, the Tigers would tie for 37th and at seven plays of 40+ the Tigers would tie for 33rd.
The Missouri defense had been very good through the season at not allowing big plays. They had been bad early on at allowing very big plays, but the total of 20+-yard plays and 30+-yard plays was actually very low.
That ended Saturday as the Tigers really struggled just to stay with receivers against an offense that had not been pass-heavy through the year.
The Tigers were also credited with 15 missed tackles, the previous season-high was 13 against Vanderbilt. So Missouri was on pace not to set its season high until the game-losing touchdown.
Just a poor game overall from the defense. There are other things you can blame if you want to, but after setting up the wins against Auburn and Oklahoma, the defense is what lost to South Carolina.
Basketball Thoughts
1. Well, that Mississippi Valley State win was nice.
Tied the program record in margin of victory, set the Dennis Gates-era record for points scored and points allowed, just a very successful game.
Hard not to have a great game against the team that is regularly the worst in Division I, or at least one of the worst.
We're four games into the season and it's probably time to start getting the rotations boiled down a little bit. The team got the big win that lets you get the walk-ons out there and see a lot of Annor Boateng, Marcus Allen and Peyton Marshall. There was also a lineup with those three, Ant Robinson and Trent Pierce that is easily the youngest lineup I've watched the Tigers put on the floor.
Considering there was a lineup last year of Nick Honor, Sean East, Noah Carter, Jesus Carralero-Martin and Connor Vanover, which was maybe the oldest lineup in the history of college basketball, it's been a pretty quick flip.
But it's time to get boiled down to 10ish guys who regularly play.
Those three freshmen are going to keep playing because the modern-day focus for college teams has to be keeping the right guys happy. And those three, plus Robinson, Pierce, Aidan Shaw and Mark Mitchell are who I see as the right guys right now.
Those are the options who will be around next year if you can keep them happy and getting them flowing together sets up a lot of success for not just this season, but next season, too.
2. I also think Marques Warrick needs to play more.
This kind of goes against the point I literally just made about closing down the rotations, but I think Warrick is one of the best guard options on the roster.
I'm trying not to buy too much into a good performance against a terrible team, but when he was finally able to play long enough to get into a rhythm, he was smooth shooting from deep, he's able to drive and create in the half court and he was able to operate the offense cleanly.
The half-court offense has been an issue for the Gates-era Tigers and Warrick brings a skillset that plays in the half-court in a way that's been desperately needed.
I don't think he's a starter, but he hadn't played as the primary ball handler at all in the first three games and I think he needs to have time as the offensive operator going forward.
Questions
I'm going to take the questions down to one per week. It seems like only one was ever drawing answers, and this way I can better respond and take in your answers.
1. I really enjoy watching documentaries as a way to get some more passive knowledge on a topic. Kind of similar to when I asked for book recommendations (and thank you guys, I'm currently waiting to get Respectable Roughnecks from the library) do you guys have any recommendations for documentaries about Mizzou sports history or the university's history in general?
missouri.rivals.com
