It’s Monday morning, so it’s time for me to let you all know what’s been on my mind the past week.
Today will be mostly basketball thoughts once again as we approach the end of the regular season.
BASKETBALL THOUGHTS
1. Last week became a must-win week because of how the Tennessee and Texas A&M games played out.
And the Tigers took care of business handily. You don’t often get a week where you absolutely have to go 2-0 when a team has played as well as the Tigers have, but after two disappointing and very close games that dropped the Tigers in a lot of national rankings and brackets, that’s what both games became.
The Tigers are a much better team than Oklahoma, that was very clear as the Sooners just had no answer for Mizzou’s interior offense, an interior offense that we haven’t really seen during conference play.
I think that was the first time I’d seen the Tigers really focus on forcing the ball to the rim as much as possible since the second half of the game against Cal. And it was one of the better games I’ve seen of the Tigers playing a half-court offense.
Then they played a fully different style against Georgia, getting back to the transition offense and 3-point shooting that we’re more used to seeing.
Not only was it an incredibly resilient week (look out for a resiliency story tomorrow morning), but one that showed a couple different ways the Tigers are able to win games. Two of the many that we’ve seen this season.
2. But even with the two wins, this week is now the biggest week of the season.
I don’t like buying into coach speak that the biggest game is always the next one, but man, this matchup with Alabama is about as big as it gets at this point.
The Tigers have clinched their spots in the NCAA Tournament with an eighth SEC win, now it’s all about moving up in the bracket, and a win against a likely No. 1 seed will do wonders.
Alabama is going to be the team, more than any other opponent this year, that wants to compete in an even faster track meet than Mizzou wants to.
The Tiger defense has played fantastic at times recently, and it’s going to have to again just to hold Alabama to fewer than 90 points, let alone the fewer than 80 the Tigers usually keep opponents to.
I really have no idea how Mizzou is going to want to play this one. Do you try to run with Alabama and make it a 200-point game? Do you do everything you can to hold the Tide under 80, slowing down the offense you usually run with to do so? The Tigers are at their best when their offense operates in less than 14 seconds, according to Dennis Gates’ analytics, so I can’t imagine they’re going to become a team that uses 27 seconds every time they have the ball and expect it to work well.
But I also think this is one of the teams in the country that can actually keep up with the Tigers at their very best.
It should be a fascinating game and I think as long as the Tigers at worst lose close, there’s nothing to really lose for Mizzou in this one.
Obviously a win is best, but like Tennessee on the road, I don’t think your resume actually gets worse if you lose close. But if the Tigers win ... we might be talking about a top-3 seed next week.
Now against Arkansas on Saturday … that’s about as must-win as it gets for the resume at this point.
3. Gates made some comments last week that I wanted to look into a little.
He said that like his mentor Leonard Hamilton, he wants to be at one school for 20 years. He wants to be at Mizzou for 20 years.
As an idea, that’s all well and good. It’s great to want to be in one spot instead of wanting to move from school to school every couple of years, but as Gates also said, it’s gotten very uncommon.
How many active coaches have been in one spot for 20 years?
Greg Kampe at Oakland leads the active tenures at 41 years, then Tom Izzo leads coaches in power conferences at 30 years at Michigan State.
Then Mark Few at Gonzaga and James Jones at Yale are both at 26 years, Randy Bennett at Saint Mary’s is in his 24th, Hamilton is stepping down after 22 at Florida State, Baylor’s Scott Drew and Bill Self are both in year 22 and Scott Davenport at Bellarmine is in year 20 right now.
That’s not a long list, and you might notice a trend in there.
Most of those teams are not power conference teams and the ones who are have had incredible success.
Big-time programs come with big-time expectations, and in two of Gates’ first three years, he’s exceeded them. In the other year, there were people calling for his job.
At this point, it seems pretty clear that last season was an aberration based on injuries and success breads success moving forward, but it only takes a couple of bad years to get rid of any buildup of good will. Even Self has people calling for his job now after all the success that program has had just because this one year hasn’t been up to expectations.
As a journalist, I love the idea of Gates hanging around for 20 years, it makes for good relationships and connections, plus better storylines and likely means the team is having a lot of success I get to cover. And that’s more fun, for sure.
I hope he’s able to achieve that goal, but it’s a big one that not many people, especially at this level of competition, are able to reach.
4. There was a fun stat the broadcast showed Saturday that I wanted to look more into.
The Tigers are 492-of-680 (72.4 percent) from the free-throw line this year and Tiger opponents are 338-of-454 (74.4 percent).
You might notice something specific in those numbers, the Tigers have made 492 tries from the line, while their opponents have shot just 454 attempts.
When I looked into it, it’s not quite as uncommon an overall stat as I expected, it's happened more than a handful of times, but it's not a yearly occurrence or anything like that. But it's also been tough to look into, if the Tigers end the season hitting more than their opponents attempt, I'll be spending some real time trying to figure out how many times that has happened overall.
As far as I can tell, Illinois was closest last season at 643 made while its opponents attempted 646. It’s possible I missed some, but I think that’s the best ratio a team had last season.
When power-conference teams do actually hit the mark, it’s usually a pretty good sign for their postseason results. I couldn’t find any lists from all of college basketball, but one was put together about historic ACC teams and the results are almost always the Sweet 16 or better out of the 28 times it had happened for an ACC team before the 2022-23 season.
Most of those were Duke or North Carolina and it was year's those teams ended up in the elite eight or better. There were a couple of Sweet 16 years and one second-round season.
Which brings us to some bracketology talk.
The Tigers were dropped to a six seed in most brackets after their 0-2 week, so how far will a dominant couple of wins raise their stock?
We’ll get some new updates today and tomorrow, but I think it’s entirely possible the Tigers enter some of those top-16 seed graphics that started coming out this week, especially with St. John’s, kansas, Arizona, Kentucky and Purdue all losing after being ranked from No. 7-16 in those brackets.
Which puts the Tigers around a No. 4 seed if they get there. I think we saw this week that the six-spot drop in the AP rankings and drop in seedings was too drastic after two very close losses to likely No. 1 and No. 2 seeds. Backing that up with dominant wins should get the Tigers back into the top 15 nationally pretty easily.
SOFTBALL THOUGHT
1. After a great first weekend, the Tiger softball team is showing some faults now, mainly in the circle.
The offense can hit, I have no question about that, but after losing Laurin Krings as the leader from last year’s pitching staff, both Marissa McCann and Cierra Harrison have struggled to start the year, especially as the defense has faultered behind them. McCann has just a 2.15 ERA, but has allowed 12 runs with only eight earned. Harrison is currently at a 5.11 ERA (yikes) with 20 runs allowed and 18 earned. For McCann, if your defense is allowing an extra run for every one you give up, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.
Harrison is hopefully just an aberration after posting a 2.05 ERA last season, if she stays at more than double her rate from a year ago, that’s a really bad sign for Mizzou.
It might be more of a baseball thing than college softball, I’m not sure, but pitchers tends to be ahead of hitters at the beginning of the season.
It’s hard to get your timing down when you’ve been away for a while, but pitchers can just jump right back into hurling almost their best stuff.
The competition has been good, the Tigers scheduled a very tough crew of opponents through the non-con portion of the year, but they haven’t been as good as what Mizzou will see during the SEC schedule.
The Tiger pitchers are going to have to get it together and quickly if Mizzou wants to post a season even close to last year’s.
OFF-TOPIC THOUGHT
1. I’ve enjoyed having a spot in here to let you guys know when I finish up one of the book recommendations you gave me early on.
So I wanted to let you guys know I read through “Tigers versus Jayhawks: From the Civial War to the Battle for No. 1.”
It was a good read, I thought it did a wonderful job taking me through the 2007 season and a good job with the early years of Gary Pinkel’s tenure altogether.
As a neutral, it wasn't hidden that it was written by a Mizzou grad, but he made that clear early on, so that's OK.
I was 12 during that 2007 season and I remember a lot of the big moments like Michigan losing to App State and all the No. 1 teams losing week after week, but I wish I’d been paying enough attentinon then to care about the game at Arrowhead.
Growing up in Seattle, the Border War wasn’t a rivalry I had ever thought about, but I’m glad I get to experience it now, especially with the return of it on the football field next year.
QUESTION
1. KenPom projects Mizzou to win out in the regular season, prediction an 86-85 win against Alabama, a 75-74 win against Arkansas, 78-64 against South Carolina, 81-78 against Vanderbilt, 78-77 against Oklahoma and 85-81 against Kentucky.
What is the worst record Mizzou could have in these final six that would leave you feeling confident about the tournament?
Today will be mostly basketball thoughts once again as we approach the end of the regular season.
BASKETBALL THOUGHTS
1. Last week became a must-win week because of how the Tennessee and Texas A&M games played out.
And the Tigers took care of business handily. You don’t often get a week where you absolutely have to go 2-0 when a team has played as well as the Tigers have, but after two disappointing and very close games that dropped the Tigers in a lot of national rankings and brackets, that’s what both games became.
The Tigers are a much better team than Oklahoma, that was very clear as the Sooners just had no answer for Mizzou’s interior offense, an interior offense that we haven’t really seen during conference play.
I think that was the first time I’d seen the Tigers really focus on forcing the ball to the rim as much as possible since the second half of the game against Cal. And it was one of the better games I’ve seen of the Tigers playing a half-court offense.
Then they played a fully different style against Georgia, getting back to the transition offense and 3-point shooting that we’re more used to seeing.
Not only was it an incredibly resilient week (look out for a resiliency story tomorrow morning), but one that showed a couple different ways the Tigers are able to win games. Two of the many that we’ve seen this season.
2. But even with the two wins, this week is now the biggest week of the season.
I don’t like buying into coach speak that the biggest game is always the next one, but man, this matchup with Alabama is about as big as it gets at this point.
The Tigers have clinched their spots in the NCAA Tournament with an eighth SEC win, now it’s all about moving up in the bracket, and a win against a likely No. 1 seed will do wonders.
Alabama is going to be the team, more than any other opponent this year, that wants to compete in an even faster track meet than Mizzou wants to.
The Tiger defense has played fantastic at times recently, and it’s going to have to again just to hold Alabama to fewer than 90 points, let alone the fewer than 80 the Tigers usually keep opponents to.
I really have no idea how Mizzou is going to want to play this one. Do you try to run with Alabama and make it a 200-point game? Do you do everything you can to hold the Tide under 80, slowing down the offense you usually run with to do so? The Tigers are at their best when their offense operates in less than 14 seconds, according to Dennis Gates’ analytics, so I can’t imagine they’re going to become a team that uses 27 seconds every time they have the ball and expect it to work well.
But I also think this is one of the teams in the country that can actually keep up with the Tigers at their very best.
It should be a fascinating game and I think as long as the Tigers at worst lose close, there’s nothing to really lose for Mizzou in this one.
Obviously a win is best, but like Tennessee on the road, I don’t think your resume actually gets worse if you lose close. But if the Tigers win ... we might be talking about a top-3 seed next week.
Now against Arkansas on Saturday … that’s about as must-win as it gets for the resume at this point.
3. Gates made some comments last week that I wanted to look into a little.
He said that like his mentor Leonard Hamilton, he wants to be at one school for 20 years. He wants to be at Mizzou for 20 years.
As an idea, that’s all well and good. It’s great to want to be in one spot instead of wanting to move from school to school every couple of years, but as Gates also said, it’s gotten very uncommon.
How many active coaches have been in one spot for 20 years?
Greg Kampe at Oakland leads the active tenures at 41 years, then Tom Izzo leads coaches in power conferences at 30 years at Michigan State.
Then Mark Few at Gonzaga and James Jones at Yale are both at 26 years, Randy Bennett at Saint Mary’s is in his 24th, Hamilton is stepping down after 22 at Florida State, Baylor’s Scott Drew and Bill Self are both in year 22 and Scott Davenport at Bellarmine is in year 20 right now.
That’s not a long list, and you might notice a trend in there.
Most of those teams are not power conference teams and the ones who are have had incredible success.
Big-time programs come with big-time expectations, and in two of Gates’ first three years, he’s exceeded them. In the other year, there were people calling for his job.
At this point, it seems pretty clear that last season was an aberration based on injuries and success breads success moving forward, but it only takes a couple of bad years to get rid of any buildup of good will. Even Self has people calling for his job now after all the success that program has had just because this one year hasn’t been up to expectations.
As a journalist, I love the idea of Gates hanging around for 20 years, it makes for good relationships and connections, plus better storylines and likely means the team is having a lot of success I get to cover. And that’s more fun, for sure.
I hope he’s able to achieve that goal, but it’s a big one that not many people, especially at this level of competition, are able to reach.
4. There was a fun stat the broadcast showed Saturday that I wanted to look more into.
The Tigers are 492-of-680 (72.4 percent) from the free-throw line this year and Tiger opponents are 338-of-454 (74.4 percent).
You might notice something specific in those numbers, the Tigers have made 492 tries from the line, while their opponents have shot just 454 attempts.
When I looked into it, it’s not quite as uncommon an overall stat as I expected, it's happened more than a handful of times, but it's not a yearly occurrence or anything like that. But it's also been tough to look into, if the Tigers end the season hitting more than their opponents attempt, I'll be spending some real time trying to figure out how many times that has happened overall.
As far as I can tell, Illinois was closest last season at 643 made while its opponents attempted 646. It’s possible I missed some, but I think that’s the best ratio a team had last season.
When power-conference teams do actually hit the mark, it’s usually a pretty good sign for their postseason results. I couldn’t find any lists from all of college basketball, but one was put together about historic ACC teams and the results are almost always the Sweet 16 or better out of the 28 times it had happened for an ACC team before the 2022-23 season.
Most of those were Duke or North Carolina and it was year's those teams ended up in the elite eight or better. There were a couple of Sweet 16 years and one second-round season.
Which brings us to some bracketology talk.
The Tigers were dropped to a six seed in most brackets after their 0-2 week, so how far will a dominant couple of wins raise their stock?
We’ll get some new updates today and tomorrow, but I think it’s entirely possible the Tigers enter some of those top-16 seed graphics that started coming out this week, especially with St. John’s, kansas, Arizona, Kentucky and Purdue all losing after being ranked from No. 7-16 in those brackets.
Which puts the Tigers around a No. 4 seed if they get there. I think we saw this week that the six-spot drop in the AP rankings and drop in seedings was too drastic after two very close losses to likely No. 1 and No. 2 seeds. Backing that up with dominant wins should get the Tigers back into the top 15 nationally pretty easily.
SOFTBALL THOUGHT
1. After a great first weekend, the Tiger softball team is showing some faults now, mainly in the circle.
The offense can hit, I have no question about that, but after losing Laurin Krings as the leader from last year’s pitching staff, both Marissa McCann and Cierra Harrison have struggled to start the year, especially as the defense has faultered behind them. McCann has just a 2.15 ERA, but has allowed 12 runs with only eight earned. Harrison is currently at a 5.11 ERA (yikes) with 20 runs allowed and 18 earned. For McCann, if your defense is allowing an extra run for every one you give up, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.
Harrison is hopefully just an aberration after posting a 2.05 ERA last season, if she stays at more than double her rate from a year ago, that’s a really bad sign for Mizzou.
It might be more of a baseball thing than college softball, I’m not sure, but pitchers tends to be ahead of hitters at the beginning of the season.
It’s hard to get your timing down when you’ve been away for a while, but pitchers can just jump right back into hurling almost their best stuff.
The competition has been good, the Tigers scheduled a very tough crew of opponents through the non-con portion of the year, but they haven’t been as good as what Mizzou will see during the SEC schedule.
The Tiger pitchers are going to have to get it together and quickly if Mizzou wants to post a season even close to last year’s.
OFF-TOPIC THOUGHT
1. I’ve enjoyed having a spot in here to let you guys know when I finish up one of the book recommendations you gave me early on.
So I wanted to let you guys know I read through “Tigers versus Jayhawks: From the Civial War to the Battle for No. 1.”
It was a good read, I thought it did a wonderful job taking me through the 2007 season and a good job with the early years of Gary Pinkel’s tenure altogether.
As a neutral, it wasn't hidden that it was written by a Mizzou grad, but he made that clear early on, so that's OK.
I was 12 during that 2007 season and I remember a lot of the big moments like Michigan losing to App State and all the No. 1 teams losing week after week, but I wish I’d been paying enough attentinon then to care about the game at Arrowhead.
Growing up in Seattle, the Border War wasn’t a rivalry I had ever thought about, but I’m glad I get to experience it now, especially with the return of it on the football field next year.
QUESTION
1. KenPom projects Mizzou to win out in the regular season, prediction an 86-85 win against Alabama, a 75-74 win against Arkansas, 78-64 against South Carolina, 81-78 against Vanderbilt, 78-77 against Oklahoma and 85-81 against Kentucky.
What is the worst record Mizzou could have in these final six that would leave you feeling confident about the tournament?
