1) Missouri got a meaningful win over UCF on Saturday afternoon. It was, by any metric, the Tigers' best of the year so far. UCF is 68th in the NET and 58th at KenPom (one spot ahead of Missouri). Mizzou's next best win is Wichita State, which is 101 in the NET and 89 at KenPom. Mizzou's rankings at those spots are 64 (NET) and 59 (KenPom). But in areas where people that pick tournament teams look, it was helpful. Saturday counts as a Quad 2 win for now, just Mizzou's second of the year. In fact, Missouri is just 3-1 in Quad 3 or better games. The Tigers are 7-0 in Quad 4 games. It's a big number, but it's not completely out of the ordinary. Ten teams ranked above Mizzou have played six Quad 4 games. One (Mississippi State) has played seven. The win was also on a neutral court, which makes Mizzou 2-0 in games away from home. The only teams higher than Mizzou in the NET with more than two road/neutral wins in the country are Florida Atlantic, Sam Houston, Yale, Southern Miss and Marshall. All of their schedules are about to get worse. In other words, Missouri's schedule isn't good, but honestly, it's not completely out of line for a high-major team before Christmas.
2) So the Tigers did a thing on Saturday that will help with the Selection Committee, but we're a ways off from needing to talk about the Selection Committee. Ten of the 13 SEC opponents, plus the remaining two non-con teams on the schedule, are top 100 teams in the NET. The Tigers only play one team (South Carolina at 285!!!) outside of the top 150 the rest of the season. In other words, 20 of Missouri's 23 most difficult games this season are still ahead of the Tigers. I think a reasonable target to have serious nerves on Selection Sunday is to go .500 the rest of the way. That means beating either Illinois or Iowa State and going 9-9 in league play. That would put Mizzou at 20-11 overall heading into the SEC Tournament. For what it's worth, that's one game better than KenPom has them projected as of today (the prediction there has a win over Iowa State and an 8-10 league record). So it's possible. But it's too soon to start thinking about it. Pomeroy has Missouri losing eight of its next nine. That includes five games against top 20 KenPom teams. If Mizzou can go even 3-6 over that stretch, I think it's pretty damn good and should keep us interested well into February at the least.
3) The way Missouri won that game, of course, was epic.
Login to view embedded media
Let's talk about some other memorable Mizzou buzzer beaters. Here are the five that jumped to my mind (I'm sure there are others):
Kevin Puryear beats Auburn in the 2016 SEC Tournament. Let's be honest, it was really only all that memorable because it gave Kim Anderson one more game and the rest of us the lasting memory of the ousted coach yelling "Shove it up their ****ing asses" walking off the court. But it was a buzzer beater.
Corey Tate over Kansas in 1997. This wasn't a good Missouri team, but it was a great game.
Zaire Taylor over Kansas and Iowa State. The shot to beat Kansas was in 2009, the one to beat Iowa State in 2010. The pair earned him the nickname "Big Shot."
Clarence Gilbert to beat Georgia in the NCAA Tournament. Quin Snyder's second team jumped out to a 15-0 lead over Georgia and gave it all back. Tied at 68, Kareem Rush found Gilbert who took a step inside the three-point line and buried a jumper to give Snyder his first NCAA Tournament win. They would lose to Duke in a great second round game two days later where Rush went off. Expectations were sky high for Snyder's next team which underachieved all season then made a run to the Big 12 Tournament final to get in the Big Dance and got to the Elite Eight as a 12 seed.
Lee Coward does it to Kansas. Twice.
Login to view embedded media
Login to view embedded media
4) The Tigers have just one game in ten days now. They'll face Illinois in the Braggin' Rights game on Thursday night. Assuming we can get there, Drew King and I will have coverage. Illinois can beat anyone in the country as it showed in an 85-78 win over then No. 2 Texas. It can also lose to anyone as it showed in the very next game, an ugly 74-59 loss to Penn State after which Brad Underwood said his players ( "deserve to walk around campus and be miserable during finals week." That game gave us the best post-game press conference moment of the season so far
Login to view embedded media
The Illini will be a stiff test. Missouri failed its first one. We'll see if the Tigers are ready for the makeup exam. Weird things happen in this game, so who knows?
5) Over on the football side, Missouri leaves for the Gasparilla Bowl today. The line has held pretty steady at Wake Forest -1 so far. It's strength against strength as
Wake is known almost exclusively for its offense while Mizzou's calling card is its defense. We'll preview this game throughout the week, but I think it's pretty similar to the Tigers' last outing against Arkansas. The defense will do well to hold Wake to 28 or less. Which means Mizzou is going to have to match its best offensive game against a Power Five opponent this season.
The best news since the Arkansas game has been the announcements of
Kris Abrams-Draine and
Ennis Rakestraw that they're coming back. They lead the SEC in pass breakups (KAD 13, Rakestraw 12) and having those guys back is a huge building block. At this point, we know
Isaiah McGuire, DJ Coleman and
Martez Manuel aren't playing in the bowl game, but it appears pretty much everyone else is. The only other starters we know of that are out are
Dominic Lovett and
Jack Stonehouse. So if you include kickers, that's 19 of 24 starters that are expected to play. That's a pretty good ratio in this day and age of bowl games and better than I thought it was going to be when the game was announced (also, for those critical of the decision to play before Christmas, I think Missouri would be down more players if it was playing a few days later).