By win percentage Phil Steele has Mizzou at 5

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Right here:

Sorry Chiefs fans, but that defensive hold was called from Vegas

complete bs

Trying to put last night in the rear view mirror and being an eternal optimist and Pollyanna, if Mizzou could go 4-1 the rest of the way, here's my final standings for the SEC:

Alabama 17-1 they have to go to A&M and TN, surely they won't go undefeated but they will undoubtedly be the champs
A&M 14-4
Tennessee 11-7 provided they pick it back up and stop their skid, Alabama at home tonight may extend it though
Mizzou 11-7 if they went 4-1, with this team's inconsistency who know, but glass 3/4 full
Auburn 10-8 could be worse don't see how it gets better than that with their schedule
Kentucky 10-8 MSU, Vandy, Auburn, TN still on their schedule, they might be worse than 10-8
Vandy 10-8 who saw this coming? Beating them at home looks better even with the slight margin as well as they are doing now
Florida, Arkansas, Miss St all at 9-9
I don't see GA getting to 9-9 especially with my believing we can win there.
The rest are so far out of it, doesn't matter.

Shoot holes in my numbers!

Some big games tonight will definitely affect the standings.

Thought I'd start a thread where any convo about games you're watching or may be of interest to Mizzou faithful could be discussed. We have a team's possible seeding, matchups and possibilities to prepare for and debate. MIZ

Talked with Nick Garner, the CEO of Every True Tiger Foundation, on Monday. Audio and video versions of that conversation here:

Crazy…good win for us, beating Tennessee..

The updated Rivals250 rankings were released yesterday, here are some notable Mizzou targets featured

Ryan Wingo - No. 16, down 10 spots
Williams Nwaneri - No. 20, up 54 spots
Aneyas Williams - No. 108, down 2 spots (Notre Dame commit)
Jayshawn Ross - No. 112, down 5 spots
Tionne Gray - No. 120, debut
Kellen Lindstrom - No. 133, debut
Darrion Dupree - No. 166, down 13 spots
Jeremiah McClellan - No. 183, down 19 spots
Jaden Reddell - No. 207, debut
Andrew Sprague - No. 225, up 16 spots

For those that might have seen him play what are your thoughts on him as a prospect?

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1. Which schools are recruiting you the hardest?
“The schools recruiting me the hardest right now are Clemson, Missouri, LSU, Arkansas, and Oklahoma State.”
3. Which college coach would you say you’ve formed the closest relationship with and why?
“The coach I’ve formed the closest relationship with so far is probably coach Gates (Missouri). I like how transparent and honest he has with me and he seems genuine in his recruitment. Just a great guy all around.”
4. Is there anybody you’d like to team up with in college or is anyone recruiting you to join them?
“I would like to play with Annor Boateng in college if it all works out in favor of it. We grew up playing with each other since we were in the third grade so to see us having a lot of similar offers is big so I definitely wouldn’t mind teaming up with him on the collegiate level.”

-Not a whole lot you can say about this one. They didn't get smoked in the second half like they did in the first. Maybe some of that is them playing better, maybe some of it is Auburn taking its foot off the pedal a little bit. But overall just a bad night for Missouri. Auburn needed and wanted the game more than them.

-Marty Smith was in the building to try a 94-foot putt for a car. Dave Matter called it the most dramatic thing that happened all night.

-The switch to man helped a bit on defense. Auburn didn't get nearly as many open looks along the 3-point line. I don't fault Mizzou for starting off in zone, Auburn wasn't supposed to be this good from deep. It was just their night.

-I talked to a few bracketologists today to figure out why the projections seem to have Mizzou all over the place and I'll have a full story on that later this week. But one thing to point out is that the NET and KenPom ratings don't factor in as much as we think they do. Mizzou is going to take a on both sites after this loss, but resume-wise they still stack up fine. It's a stretch to call them a bubble team, even after this game.

-The good news: The schedule isn't nearly as difficult here on out. It's Texas A&M and Mississippi State at home, Georgia and LSU on the road and Ole Miss at home in the regular season finale. There's time to make up for tonight's performance.

*This won't be long. Everyone played poorly. EVERYONE. VERY POORLY.

*It's not fair to single anyone out but Dennis Gates said last week that Kobe Brown couldn't have a bad night. He had a bad night. Everyone else did too, but this was a flashback to when we wondered why Kobe sometimes just didn't show up against good teams.

*This was not hard to see coming. I said on our live show today that Auburn HAD to win this game and because of the win at Tennessee, Missouri didn't have to. I know you're thinking "How can you no show with everything still out there?" It's human nature. They're college kids. A letdown wasn't hard to see and when you combine it with a desperate opponent, things like tonight can happen. Now, I'm not going to tell you I thought Missouri would be down 27 at half and lose by almost 40. I expected a 20 point loss. It was significantly worse.

*There was a game last year that Mizzou was behind by so much at Arkansas that the Razorbacks could have won had they not scored in the second half. Missouri at least avoided that tonight. Auburn would have had to score 12 after the break to win. Silver linings.

*Everything you wanted is still out there. If I had told you on Friday Mizzou would split road games at Tennessee and Auburn, every single one of you would have taken it (especially if you knew the combined scoring margin would be -30). Mizzou can still finish in the top four in the league. It probably has to win out to do so. I'm sure there will be a lot of panicking about "We can't even stay within 30 of Auburn, how the hell do we think we're going to beat Texas A&M or Mississippi State?" This team won at Tennessee three days ago. Today doesn't end the season. It might cost you a seed in the NCAA Tournament though.

*That said, this game did show that Missouri isn't beyond a trainwreck of a night. Auburn exposed some things. They destroyed Missouri on the boards, as most teams have. They forced the Tigers into 16 turnovers, including 11 in the first half. Auburn came into the game averaging 72 points, shooting 29% from three and 251st in the country in effective field goal percentage. Tonight, it hit 72 with 8:06 to go, made 9/18 from three and shot 48.5% from the floor (it was significantly higher before the final few mintues). I'm going to keep saying it because people keep denying it: This is a bad defensive team. If they do not get a steal, they give up points. If you hang on to the ball, you're probably beating Missouri.

*Anyway, Drew will have postgame coverage from Auburn. There's not much to say about this one.

That we were supposed to downright suck this year. Nobody thought we would even be in this place in Mid-February. We were picked in the bottom of the SEC. No one thought we'd be close to being ranked, let alone playing ourselves into the tournament. Last night sucked, I get that. But let's have some perspective and enjoy the ride. The future is bright

1) One of the things I think about most when it comes to sports is "Why do we care?" I think about it all the time. When you get down to it we're cheering for people we don't know wearing clothes we like playing a game we all played when we were kids. Why is it important? Why do we build our lives around it and let it tie us in knots and let it dictate our happiness? Because of weekends like this one. Because the joy of watching your team win--especially when it looked unlikely/impossible--makes it all worth it. Because nothing else in life (at least nothing legal) gives us quite that same kind of high.

Anytime I see something in sports like we saw this weekend--and we saw it twice in this particular part of the country--I think "How are there people who don't like this?" Like, how can you walk this earth and not find the theater and the competition compelling? What do non-sports fans do to chase the feeling sports gives the rest of us? I have no idea. But even for the old and jaded among us, weekends like this one are awesome. Because they remind us why we all care so much.

2) As for the particulars of this weekend, let's start with the first one and the one far more of you want to read about. Missouri beat No. 6 Tennessee 86-85 in a game it had won, then had lost, then won again. They won it because they have, so far as I can tell, the best trick shot artist in college basketball.

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For the record, I tweeted that during the South Carolina game. I don't really even know which shot from DeAndre Gholston prompted it. There have probably been at least a dozen of them this year where Gholston goes to shoot it and you think "What the hell is he doing? There's no way this ball goes in." And then it does. Gholston makes plenty of mistakes. He often drives into traffic and turns the ball over. I truly do understand why fans get frustrated with him. But when the stakes are highest, Gholston is the guy Missouri goes to because he keeps coming through. The first notable one was a half-court bank shot to beat UCF. Dennis Gates told us after that one that Gholston had actually beaten him with a last-second shot when Gholston was at Milwaukee and Gates was at Cleveland State. And Gholston told us he'd actually hit a handful of buzzer beaters. And then he did this on Saturday in Knoxville

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The crazy thing is I don't think that was Gholston's most important or most improbable shot of the game. With Tennessee leading 81-77 and the shot clock under five for the Tigers, Gholston got the ball on the left wing. He was closely guarded and to even get a shot off he had to put about twice as much arc on it as a normal shot. He shot the ball so high I thought it was going to come up two feet short. But it somehow went in. It got the Tigers back within a point and gave them a chance.

3) Here's one of the craziest things about Gholston's heroics to me:

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Coward beat Kansas at the buzzer twice in a year. Gilbert, the most conscience free shooter in Mizzou history (at least this side of Mark Atkins) is, to my knowledge, the only Tiger to win a game with a buzzer beater in the NCAA Tournament. And now Gholston. If I were to come play basketball at Missouri, I might ask to wear No. 4.

4) There were, believe it or not, other players on the court for Missouri in Knoxville. They all deserve acknowledgement. Good Kobe Brown showed up with 12 points in 14 second half minutes. He took the baton from Sean East II, who had 12 points, 2 assists, 2 steals and no turnovers in 14 minutes in the first half to stake Mizzou to a double-digit lead. Mabor Majak (!!!!) contributed a huge block and a free throw and Gates specifically said Missouri wouldn't have won the game without his contributions. It is emblematic of this season for Missouri. Yes, Kobe is the best player and nobody questions that. But he's surrounded by a whole bunch of guys who, on any given day, can be the hero. It's a team that is greater than the sum of its parts.

5) What it all means is that Missouri is almost going to have to try to miss the NCAA Tournament at this point. It was the Tigers' fourth Quad 1 victory. They've added four Quad 2 victories. Those aren't numbers that stack up with the nation's elite teams by any means, but at 8-6, Mizzou has a better Q1/2 record than the following teams: Creighton, Indiana, Rutgers, Illinois, Arkansas, TCU, West Virginia, Maryland, Oklahoma State, Duke, Texas A&M, Auburn, North Carolina, Mississippi State, Memphis, Providence and Kentucky. The Tigers have proven they can beat teams that are going to be in the NCAA Tournament. That's very, very important. All six of their losses are against Quad 1 teams. Which means that they haven't lost to ANYBODY that is certain to miss the tournament. Their only two home losses are to potential one seeds. The other losses are against quality teams on the road. The resume is impressive.

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Also a teammate of QB target Daniel Kaelin

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Is it Dennis’s browser history? Incriminating photos? His bank information?

He has been absolutely horrible. Maybe the worst player on the floor, but he has not left the floor.

Turnovers, jumping at 3 point shooters, bad shots.

He should never be the primary point, and he’s the last person who should be the guy with the ball when the game needs focus.

Mizzou Mafia member Aaron Ladd, a 2018 graduate of Missouri's J-School, was the guest speaker at the Tiger Club on Tues., Feb. 14. Aaron joined KSHB-TV as a sports anchor and multimedia journalist in 2020.

The Club meets each Tuesday during the school year at Westport Flea Market Bar & Grill. Our Feb. 21 guest will be Adam Teicher of ESPN.

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to Principia College. We're excited about the basketball program. the culture of the school and the opportunity she has to be on the floor as a freshman. Principia made the conference tournament for the first time since 2006, and Elyssa has played with their best player....who happens to be a freshman. They play well together and Elyssa is excited about the opportunity of them growing together for a few years.

I don't know how to embed video from Twitter, so I gotta go with the basic text. My bad...

Really sucks to not be ranked but what’s worse is to play like this in national TV. Not how you win friends or influence the media to get votes.

Mizzou moves up seven spots from 51 to 44


But to show the oddity, here's an example of why I don't really understand the net rankings

Rutgers
Rank: 21
Overall record: 16-9
Road record: 2-6
Neutral record: 0-1
Home record: 14-2
Quad 1: 4-6
Quad 2: 4-2
Quad 3: 1-1
Quad 4 7-0

Mizzou
Rank: 44
Overall record: 19-6
Road record: 3-4
Neutral record: 2-0
Home record: 14-2
Quad 1: 4-6
Quad 2: 4-0
Quad 3: 3-0
Quad 4 8-0

The difference in the two teams is that Rutgers has played two more Quad 2 games, but lost them both. Missouri has the edge or is even in EVERY category. And ranked 23 spots lower. Which is why the NET is a tool, but has to be far from the only tool the committee uses