It's Monday morning, so it's time for me to let you all know what's been on my mind the past few days.
It's almost all going to be basketball stuff today.
BASKETBALL THOUGHTS
1. The SEC is very, very good.
We've talked about that a lot, as has everyone else. But man, that game against Auburn and looking through the rest of Saturday's conference openers really made it clear. And winning any games on the road is going to be really tough. (There will be an Around the SEC story coming tomorrow. I think I'm going to do two a week for basketball so they can just be one game per team. But I find it really helps me keep up with everything going on).
Home teams went 7-1 Saturday with Vanderbilt beating LSU as the only road victory.
In the home wins, the average margin of victory was 20.14 points, including Mississippi State winning by 35, Alabama beating previously-unbeaten and No. 12 Oklahoma by 28, Tennessee beating No. 23 Arkansas by 24 and Texas A&M beating Texas by 20.
A 16-point loss on the road to the best team in the conference really wasn't bad.
I do think there's some separation between Auburn/Tennessee and the teams after them, but Florida, Alabama, Kentucky and Mississippi State are close behind.
Saturday was just more and more proof that the next couple of months are going to be a gauntlet for Mizzou and the Tigers are going to have to do everything they can to get the job done at home, because opportunities to pick up a road win are going to be few and far between.
2. A key to getting the job done at home though will be the best players not all slumping at the same time.
Saturday was about as poor a performance from the Tiger Starting 5 as possible.
Ant Robinson played 15 minutes, shot 0-for-2 and had two rebounds and two assists.
Mark Mitchell played 17 minutes, shot 2-of-9 and had one rebound.
Tony Perkins played 20 minutes and shot 2-of-3 with three assists and two steals (the best performance in the group in my opinion, which isn't saying much.
Tamar Bates played 23 minutes, shot 3-of-9 overall and 0-of-4 from 3 while grabbing three boards.
Josh Gray played nine minutes, hit one shot and had two rebounds.
When your entire starting lineup produces a worse day than a single one of the opponent's players - Johni Broome had 24 points to the Mizzou starters' 21, seven rebounds to the starters' nine and four blocks to the starters' zero - it's going to be a rough day.
Not only is that the fewest points and rebounds the Starting 5 had in a game this year, it's the third time the Tigers didn't have just two starters combine for at least 20 points and nine rebounds, let alone all five. (The other two were the Eastern Washington and Lindenwood games because Annor Boateng started and played 4/3 minutes. If we call Caleb Grill essentially a starter against Eastern Washington and Perkins or Marques Warrick essentially one against Lindenwood since they played the most minutes, then Saturday was the first time).
3. But along the same line, we saw a great performance from some other Tigers late in the game.
Marcus Allen has been impressing me for most of the season and had the best game of anybody who didn't enter the season as college basketball's leading scorer.
Allen played the second most minutes on the team, led the team with five rebounds (a career high) and added nine points and three steals (another career high). He did the best of anybody matching up with Broome defensively and put up his second-highest point total of his career.
Allen's role will continue to grow as he continues to play well. Considering he had his best performance against the best team the Tigers have played so far, I'd say he has adjusted to college basketball, and SEC play specifically, pretty quickly.
Warrick poured in 19 points to be the only Tiger in double figures. I'm not sure why he doesn't play more minutes regularly.
He's struggled in the other major games on the Tigers' schedule, posting no points in 8 minutes in the Border War and three points in 8 minutes in Braggin' Rights. I was starting to get a bit worried that the level of play was just too much of a step up for a guy who built his career playing the likes of Green Bay, Purdue-Fort Wayne and Detroit Mercy.
But finally Warrick showed he's still got his bag of moves available against top-tier opponents.
But even in a very solid performance where the other Tiger guards were really struggling and Warrick seemed like the only Tiger able to create an open look, he played 17 minutes. Which was less than Jacob Crews and tied with Trent Pierce and Mitchell.
Pierce looked good at times, T.O. Barrett is going to continue to play because he brings a lot of energy.
But Warrick is the one who needs to be on the court more. Gates likes to talk about how skill sets fit together and I think the reason Warrick isn't a more regular player is because his skill set clashes with some of the starters. He's very ball dominant, which doesn't work well with any of the starters but Gray.
So he leads the crew of the backups, which gives him more room to work with the ball, but man, sometimes he's the only one who knows how to get a bucket and it's abundantly clear how he's scored so many points in college basketball.
4. We also got a more clear look at the SEC being a behemoth in women's basketball as well.
Problem is, the Tiger women just aren't very good. The men's team may be able to survive the SEC season around .500 and make the tournament.
The women's team will not.
It's not reasonable to say a poor performance against South Carolina, the dominant dynasty of the past decade, is a view of what the rest of the season will look like. And Alabama is very good, too, a poor performance on the road there isn't a huge determiner either.
But I just don't see a way the Tigers match up with most of the conference.
Texas is great, Oklahoma is very good, Tennessee is very good as always. Ole Miss, Kentucky, LSU, all great teams.
When you're staring down a conference that includes so many top teams, barely being able to beat Tulane or SMU and losing to Oral Roberts and Norfolk State just doesn't leave much room for confidence.
My pretty optimistic look before the season had the team going 16-15 overall and 5-11 in SEC play. That would mean 5-9 from here on out.
One of those wins has to come against Georgia on Thursday, but that's still an SEC road game.
If that one's not a win, 5-11 in SEC play is looking like a pretty big ask.
FOOTBALL THOUGHT
1. Alright, let's talk about the portal again.
We're pretty much done with the core of the changes. Not completely done, but we've seen the strong majority of what we're going to see.
The Tigers got their quarterback, they went from pretty thin to very deep in the defensive backfield, the linebacker room looks very, very solid and even more so if Triston Newson decides to come back. I expect that decision to be made soon.
The offense got some pretty impressive weapons as well.
So is it an overall win or a loss?
For 2025 specifically, I think it's a big, big win.
If Beau Pribula isn't the starting quarterback, that means Sam Horn or Drew Pyne have developed a lot. Win.
Kevin Coleman will almost certainly be a better receiver in 2025 than Courtney Crutchfield or Mekhi Miller. Win.
We can call going from Kewan Lacy to Ahmad Hardy a push at this point because of the difference in level of opposition, but I would say having a year of experience on the field is better than not. It's hard to know how much Hardy will be able to recreate his performance against lower-level competition when he jumps into SEC play, but he does have a history of production that Lacy doesn't have at this point and he won't be asked to do nearly as much next season as he was this year. Push.
The offensive line had a ton to replace. I don't know if the group will be better overall than it was in 2024, but the incoming transfers make it a lot better than it would have been just trying to replace three starters internally. Win.
Phillip Roche and Jaren Sensabaugh turned into four defensive backs who all have more experience and a couple who have more than a year of eligibility left. Win.
The linebackers had a lot to replace and it looks like the room overall might be better than it was this year. Win.
The only spot I would say the Tigers didn't have a net upgrade in the portal is defensive line and that's mostly because of what Williams Nwaneri and Jaylen Brown might have been able to become this year. I like Nate Johnson, we'll see what Langden Kitchen has, but neither have the explosive development opportunity this season. Loss.
A couple of years from now, maybe the guys who transferred out will be the best players on their teams. Who knows?
There's a lot of potential that left Columbia. But we're multiple transfer portal sessions away from that.
College football is now a year-to-year business and the Tigers did a great job improving the team for 2025.
We'll worry about 2026 and 2027 when we get there.
WRESTLING THOUGHT
1. I think we've gotten to the point where this season can be called pretty disappointing for a program that has a whole lot of history of major success.
Injuries are definitely a major key, but wrestling isn't really a sport where there's a ton of change at the top of the rankings year to year.
Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma State, Penn State, Iowa State are all always around the top of the standings. I think the best way to show just how much faith there is in Mizzou's wrestling program nationally is the Tigers are 2-6 with wins against Binghamton and Northern Colorado and are still ranked in the top-20 for now.
Don't get me wrong, none of the losses have been what would be considered bad losses in other sports. Every one has been against a ranked opponent.
But there's a lot of ranked opponents remaining on the Mizzou schedule and with the news that Rocky Elam won't return this year, Noah Surtin has retired because of injury and Keegan O'Toole won't be back until at best February, which means at most three regular-season matches left, it's just not going to be a good year for the team.
O'Toole will still compete for an individual championship if he's fully healthy again - that's the point of him not wrestling for the next month - and I think there's still stuff to be happy about, like Gage Walker's performance so far.
But team wise, this looks like it will be a year to forget in the long history of Mizzou wrestling.
QUESTION
I forgot to ask during the holidays, but do you guys have Mizzou-related traditions for Christmastime?
My dad - who went to Iowa and did not enjoy some of my stories leading up to the bowl game - had a little Hawkeye counter to count down the days until Christmas. It had a couple of blocks that we would try to remember to change every day to keep the accurate countdown going.
Because I have great timing and the decorations are put away or are headed that way, I'd love to hear about any Mizzou traditions you guys have around the house.
It's almost all going to be basketball stuff today.
BASKETBALL THOUGHTS
1. The SEC is very, very good.
We've talked about that a lot, as has everyone else. But man, that game against Auburn and looking through the rest of Saturday's conference openers really made it clear. And winning any games on the road is going to be really tough. (There will be an Around the SEC story coming tomorrow. I think I'm going to do two a week for basketball so they can just be one game per team. But I find it really helps me keep up with everything going on).
Home teams went 7-1 Saturday with Vanderbilt beating LSU as the only road victory.
In the home wins, the average margin of victory was 20.14 points, including Mississippi State winning by 35, Alabama beating previously-unbeaten and No. 12 Oklahoma by 28, Tennessee beating No. 23 Arkansas by 24 and Texas A&M beating Texas by 20.
A 16-point loss on the road to the best team in the conference really wasn't bad.
I do think there's some separation between Auburn/Tennessee and the teams after them, but Florida, Alabama, Kentucky and Mississippi State are close behind.
Saturday was just more and more proof that the next couple of months are going to be a gauntlet for Mizzou and the Tigers are going to have to do everything they can to get the job done at home, because opportunities to pick up a road win are going to be few and far between.
2. A key to getting the job done at home though will be the best players not all slumping at the same time.
Saturday was about as poor a performance from the Tiger Starting 5 as possible.
Ant Robinson played 15 minutes, shot 0-for-2 and had two rebounds and two assists.
Mark Mitchell played 17 minutes, shot 2-of-9 and had one rebound.
Tony Perkins played 20 minutes and shot 2-of-3 with three assists and two steals (the best performance in the group in my opinion, which isn't saying much.
Tamar Bates played 23 minutes, shot 3-of-9 overall and 0-of-4 from 3 while grabbing three boards.
Josh Gray played nine minutes, hit one shot and had two rebounds.
When your entire starting lineup produces a worse day than a single one of the opponent's players - Johni Broome had 24 points to the Mizzou starters' 21, seven rebounds to the starters' nine and four blocks to the starters' zero - it's going to be a rough day.
Not only is that the fewest points and rebounds the Starting 5 had in a game this year, it's the third time the Tigers didn't have just two starters combine for at least 20 points and nine rebounds, let alone all five. (The other two were the Eastern Washington and Lindenwood games because Annor Boateng started and played 4/3 minutes. If we call Caleb Grill essentially a starter against Eastern Washington and Perkins or Marques Warrick essentially one against Lindenwood since they played the most minutes, then Saturday was the first time).
3. But along the same line, we saw a great performance from some other Tigers late in the game.
Marcus Allen has been impressing me for most of the season and had the best game of anybody who didn't enter the season as college basketball's leading scorer.
Allen played the second most minutes on the team, led the team with five rebounds (a career high) and added nine points and three steals (another career high). He did the best of anybody matching up with Broome defensively and put up his second-highest point total of his career.
Allen's role will continue to grow as he continues to play well. Considering he had his best performance against the best team the Tigers have played so far, I'd say he has adjusted to college basketball, and SEC play specifically, pretty quickly.
Warrick poured in 19 points to be the only Tiger in double figures. I'm not sure why he doesn't play more minutes regularly.
He's struggled in the other major games on the Tigers' schedule, posting no points in 8 minutes in the Border War and three points in 8 minutes in Braggin' Rights. I was starting to get a bit worried that the level of play was just too much of a step up for a guy who built his career playing the likes of Green Bay, Purdue-Fort Wayne and Detroit Mercy.
But finally Warrick showed he's still got his bag of moves available against top-tier opponents.
But even in a very solid performance where the other Tiger guards were really struggling and Warrick seemed like the only Tiger able to create an open look, he played 17 minutes. Which was less than Jacob Crews and tied with Trent Pierce and Mitchell.
Pierce looked good at times, T.O. Barrett is going to continue to play because he brings a lot of energy.
But Warrick is the one who needs to be on the court more. Gates likes to talk about how skill sets fit together and I think the reason Warrick isn't a more regular player is because his skill set clashes with some of the starters. He's very ball dominant, which doesn't work well with any of the starters but Gray.
So he leads the crew of the backups, which gives him more room to work with the ball, but man, sometimes he's the only one who knows how to get a bucket and it's abundantly clear how he's scored so many points in college basketball.
4. We also got a more clear look at the SEC being a behemoth in women's basketball as well.
Problem is, the Tiger women just aren't very good. The men's team may be able to survive the SEC season around .500 and make the tournament.
The women's team will not.
It's not reasonable to say a poor performance against South Carolina, the dominant dynasty of the past decade, is a view of what the rest of the season will look like. And Alabama is very good, too, a poor performance on the road there isn't a huge determiner either.
But I just don't see a way the Tigers match up with most of the conference.
Texas is great, Oklahoma is very good, Tennessee is very good as always. Ole Miss, Kentucky, LSU, all great teams.
When you're staring down a conference that includes so many top teams, barely being able to beat Tulane or SMU and losing to Oral Roberts and Norfolk State just doesn't leave much room for confidence.
My pretty optimistic look before the season had the team going 16-15 overall and 5-11 in SEC play. That would mean 5-9 from here on out.
One of those wins has to come against Georgia on Thursday, but that's still an SEC road game.
If that one's not a win, 5-11 in SEC play is looking like a pretty big ask.
FOOTBALL THOUGHT
1. Alright, let's talk about the portal again.
We're pretty much done with the core of the changes. Not completely done, but we've seen the strong majority of what we're going to see.
The Tigers got their quarterback, they went from pretty thin to very deep in the defensive backfield, the linebacker room looks very, very solid and even more so if Triston Newson decides to come back. I expect that decision to be made soon.
The offense got some pretty impressive weapons as well.
So is it an overall win or a loss?
For 2025 specifically, I think it's a big, big win.
If Beau Pribula isn't the starting quarterback, that means Sam Horn or Drew Pyne have developed a lot. Win.
Kevin Coleman will almost certainly be a better receiver in 2025 than Courtney Crutchfield or Mekhi Miller. Win.
We can call going from Kewan Lacy to Ahmad Hardy a push at this point because of the difference in level of opposition, but I would say having a year of experience on the field is better than not. It's hard to know how much Hardy will be able to recreate his performance against lower-level competition when he jumps into SEC play, but he does have a history of production that Lacy doesn't have at this point and he won't be asked to do nearly as much next season as he was this year. Push.
The offensive line had a ton to replace. I don't know if the group will be better overall than it was in 2024, but the incoming transfers make it a lot better than it would have been just trying to replace three starters internally. Win.
Phillip Roche and Jaren Sensabaugh turned into four defensive backs who all have more experience and a couple who have more than a year of eligibility left. Win.
The linebackers had a lot to replace and it looks like the room overall might be better than it was this year. Win.
The only spot I would say the Tigers didn't have a net upgrade in the portal is defensive line and that's mostly because of what Williams Nwaneri and Jaylen Brown might have been able to become this year. I like Nate Johnson, we'll see what Langden Kitchen has, but neither have the explosive development opportunity this season. Loss.
A couple of years from now, maybe the guys who transferred out will be the best players on their teams. Who knows?
There's a lot of potential that left Columbia. But we're multiple transfer portal sessions away from that.
College football is now a year-to-year business and the Tigers did a great job improving the team for 2025.
We'll worry about 2026 and 2027 when we get there.
WRESTLING THOUGHT
1. I think we've gotten to the point where this season can be called pretty disappointing for a program that has a whole lot of history of major success.
Injuries are definitely a major key, but wrestling isn't really a sport where there's a ton of change at the top of the rankings year to year.
Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma State, Penn State, Iowa State are all always around the top of the standings. I think the best way to show just how much faith there is in Mizzou's wrestling program nationally is the Tigers are 2-6 with wins against Binghamton and Northern Colorado and are still ranked in the top-20 for now.
Don't get me wrong, none of the losses have been what would be considered bad losses in other sports. Every one has been against a ranked opponent.
But there's a lot of ranked opponents remaining on the Mizzou schedule and with the news that Rocky Elam won't return this year, Noah Surtin has retired because of injury and Keegan O'Toole won't be back until at best February, which means at most three regular-season matches left, it's just not going to be a good year for the team.
O'Toole will still compete for an individual championship if he's fully healthy again - that's the point of him not wrestling for the next month - and I think there's still stuff to be happy about, like Gage Walker's performance so far.
But team wise, this looks like it will be a year to forget in the long history of Mizzou wrestling.
QUESTION
I forgot to ask during the holidays, but do you guys have Mizzou-related traditions for Christmastime?
My dad - who went to Iowa and did not enjoy some of my stories leading up to the bowl game - had a little Hawkeye counter to count down the days until Christmas. It had a couple of blocks that we would try to remember to change every day to keep the accurate countdown going.
Because I have great timing and the decorations are put away or are headed that way, I'd love to hear about any Mizzou traditions you guys have around the house.
