Football Thoughts
1. We finally saw what I thought the offense could look like on Saturday.
I wrote a good bit about the feeling I got from watching the offense in my column from yesterday, click here if you want to check that out. So let's look a bit more at the stats that back it up.
The first big one I noticed watching on Saturday was Luther Burden and Theo Wease getting yards after the catch. One of the coolest things I've had the pleasure to watch during games I'm covering is Luther Burden working after the catch. Just winding his way through defenses and through defenders with the ball in his hands. It's part of what makes him such a huge NFL prospect even with a somewhat disappointing final college season.
Last season, Burden averaged 8.4 yards after catch per reception and had two games with more than 100. He had 124 in the Memphis game, where he piled up 177 receiving yards, and he had 104 after the catch against Florida, a 154-yard receiving performance. He was regularly reaching 50 yards after the catch, especially early in the season.
This year, he's reached 50 yards after the catch three times. He had 75 against Boston College - a 117-yard receiving performance and the only game he's reached 100 yards this season - he had 54 against UMass - which, meh - and he had 65 Saturday out of 91 total yards.
Now, I want to make clear, I don't say this as a way to denigrate Burden or Wease's performances this year, yards after the catch are a product of both shifty receivers who can make a play and quarterbacks who put the ball in the best spot to get them room to work. It's not fully on either one and a lot of Burden's runs after the catch last year came on deep passes that just weren't hitting this season. Also not to say deep passes are the best way to get yards after the catch, look at Marquis Johnson, the deep passes the last two weeks have been nice to have back, but they've had exactly 5 yards after the catch combined on the two.
But Luther just hasn't had the chance to break free and move around after the catch that much this season. Teams have spent a lot of extra focus keeping him from getting around a solo defender, leading to him averaging just 6.3 yards after the catch per reception this year, but he had 9.3 per catch Saturday.
Wease wasn't as much of a run-after-catch guy last year, he had 282 of his 682 receiving yards come after the catch for an average of 5.8 per catch last season. His best game was 77 yards after the catch against Florida when he had one catch, a catch in the flat where he then ran past the entire team down the sideline, for 77 yards.
This season he has 302 yards after the catch out of 709 receiving yards, giving him an average of 5.9 yards after the catch per reception. He had 73 against Buffalo, which, meh.
The team as a whole just hasn't been as good after the catch. Last season, Mizzou averaged 6.7 yards after the catch per reception. This season, that number is just 5.7, which places the Tigers in a tie for 11th in the SEC with ... Oklahoma.
In my column, I talked about the difference I saw in the running game, but I wanted to dive more into the yards after the catch after watching Burden weaved his way through defenders on Saturday and reminded me how much fun that is to watch.
2. Im going to address something that I think is getting overblown, including by me right after the game. The defense hasn't been terrible and Corey Batoon isn't getting fired.
Look, the Tigers had one of the best defenses in the country last season that ended up losing five starters to the NFL and another couple to graduation. That's a lot to lose off of one defense. Add in changing coordinators and this year was never going to look as good. It just wasn't.
And yet, the Tigers have the No. 21 defense in the country in yards allowed at just 314.0 per game. That's seventh in the SEC because there's a lot of very good defenses in the SEC, but overall, very good.
That secondary that's been such an issue this year? They've led the Tigers to 181.5 passing yards allowed per game, which places Mizzou 18th in the country and third in the SEC.
The run defense has been a problem, no doubt, as has tackling the past couple of weeks, but the defense has been VERY good throughout the year. It's just not the same as last years. It's not as fun because there aren't as many turnovers, though the past few weeks have had some pretty important ones, and at key points the defense has fallen flat for sure. No denying that.
But come on guys, the Corey Batoon talk is outrageous. He's a first-year DC who's leading a top-21 defense that had to replace more than half of its starters. He's done a great job. Stop it.
3. Let's talk about bowls.
As fun as the chaos of the week was, it didn't help Mizzou's search for a good bowl. I explained a couple of other times what the bowl order is, but I'll do a quick runthrough here, too.
After the CFP gets it's SEC teams, the Citrus Bowl gets to pick from what's left. Then the conference works with the Texas Bowl, the Vegas Bowl, the Music City Bowl, the Gator Bowl, the Liberty Bowl and the ReliaQuest Bowl to select teams to go to each one. After that group is all selected, the Birmingham Bowl and the Gasparilla Bowl get to choose from what is left.
Because of this weekend's losses by teams fighting for playoff spots - Ole Miss, Alabama and Texas A&M - it's looking likely the SEC might only get three teams into the playoff depending on how these last couple of weeks play out. If Texas A&M turns around and beats Texas this week, then the Longhorns lose in the SEC championship, there might only be Georgia and Tennessee heading to the playoff. But what if Vanderbilt decides to play spoiler again and beats Tennessee? There might only end up being one two-loss SEC team and that team might be the auto-bid conference champion.
It's also possible the national media and the committee will really make the rest of the country hate the SEC by arguing one or two three-loss SEC teams should be in in front of one-loss teams with worse schedules. I was on board for the two-loss SEC teams last week saying they should get in over Indiana if Indiana lost to Ohio State big (it did) but three losses? No, no, no. We can't get to a point where the outcomes of the actual games don't matter anymore.
Also, we gotta go back to divisions. The conference championship scenarios across all the major conferences are insane.
But back to the bowls. Less SEC teams in the CFP means more teams competing for those bowl spots and with Alabama, Texas A&M and South Carolina all likely ending with three losses, that means Mizzou isn't all that close to the top of the list of the remaining teams.
Sporting News has it breaking down as: Alabama in the Citrus Bowl, South Carolina in the Gator Bowl, Texas A&M in the ReliaQuest Bowl, Mizzou facing Minnesota in the Music City Bowl, LSU in the Liberty Bowl and Ole Miss in the Texas Bowl for the three-loss SEC teams.
ESPN's Kyle Bonagura has Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl, Mizzou vs. USC in the Vegas Bowl, LSU in the Independence Bowl, South Carolina in the Music City Bowl, Ole Miss in the ReliaQuest Bowl, Alabama in the Citrus Bowl, Texas A&M in the Texas Bowl and LSU in the Gator Bowl.
ESPN's Mark Schlabach has Florida in the Liberty Bowl, Texas A&M in the Vegas Bowl, Oklahoma in the Independence Bowl, Ole Miss in the Music City Bowl, Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl, South Carolina in the Citrus Bowl LSU in the Texas Bowl and Mizzou vs. Louisville in the Gator Bowl.
So that gives us projections for Mizzou vs. Minnesota in Nashville on Dec. 30; vs. USC in Vegas on Dec. 27; or vs. Louisville in Jacksonville on Jan. 2.
Those actually aren't that different from where we were at last week, but any possibility for the Citrus Bowl has effectively been eliminated. Just for vacation purposes, I'd take a Nashville or Vegas trip for New Years. Either way, pretty fun.
Other Sports Thoughts
1. Yes, the men's basketball team is playing a truly terrible stretch of opponents. But there's still a lot you can actually take away from these past five games, and the past three especially.
Again, I want to make clear, AWFUL opponents. Mississippi Valley State is literally last in the KenPom rankings. The worst team in Division I. Arkansas-Pine Bluff isn't far behind at 362 out of 364 (Coppin State is in between them at 363 and I don't know if I've ever heard of Coppin State). Pacific is a bit better at No. 282, but we're staying near the bottom with Lindenwood (No. 351) this week.
Winning those games is nothing. Dominating those games over and over again is something.
Beating MVSU by 72 and putting up 111 points when MVSU followed it up with an 18-point loss to Kansas State is something. Beating Pacific by 16 more points than Arkansas did is something. Winning three straight games by 35+ points for the first time in school history is something.
Not having any second-half lag after that still seemed to be such an issue through the season's first three games is something.
The difference in the style of play is something, too.
The Tigers are getting to the free-throw line A LOT. That's certainly a product of playing bad opponents, it's easier to draw fouls against less-disciplined teams, but 41 free throw attempts against Pine Bluff, 23 against Pacific and 35 against MVSU is a lot of free throw attempts in any three-game stretch. The addition of Mark Mitchell and the maturation of Ant Robinson's game have brought a style of attacking the basket that the Tigers have been desperately needing the first two seasons of Dennis Gates' tenure in Columbia.
The rebounding has been so much better, too. Again, the number of rebounds itself is in part a product of facing bad opponents, I'm not trying to deny that or say you should expect the Tigers to outrebound their opponents by 10+ every game.
But there weren't stretches of rebounding like this the past two seasons. Even against the bad teams, Mizzou was beating them by getting a ton of steals and turning them into points on the other end, but the rebounding battle would still be close.
Missouri won the rebounding battle against SIU-Edwardsville 37-33, South Carolina State 33-26 and Central Arkansas 47-22 in the three biggest wins of last season.
The Tigers outrebounded MVSU 42-28, Pacific 38-32 and Pine Bluff 50-32.
And it's not just coming from Josh Gray or Mitchell. Robinson had 11 on Sunday, four players had at least five and another two had four. The rebounding all over the floor is better this year. I still expect them to lose the rebounding battles when they face better opponents, but if they can lose that battle by five or seven instead of 15 like they did so much of last year, that will be a huge plus.
The Tigers also gained 15 spots in the KenPom rankings after their past three games, raising to No. 49 as Mizzou has outscored its projections by 55 points, while it was 42 points behind projections through six games last year.
2. The shooting won't stay this good though, so don't get used to it.
We already saw a good bit of fall off against Pine Bluff. The Tigers had been crazy hot from behind the 3-point line against Eastern Washington, MVSU and Pacific, largely because of Caleb Grill's incredible stretch, but outside of Grill, the team shot just 5-of-24 from deep against Pine Bluff.
That happens to teams that shoot as much as Mizzou does, sometimes they're going to hit a ton and sometimes they aren't. It happens.
But even hitting only 28.1 percent from 3 on Sunday, the Tigers scored 112 points for a new season and Gates-era high, because they rebounded, attacked the basket and got to the free throw line 41 times.
The shooting isn't going to be incredible every night, but this team has aspects to it that will make up for bad shooting nights in a way last year's team definitely didn't.
3. Wrestling is off to a rough start, but the Tigers will be fine.
Mizzou has started the season 1-2 and is under .500 in duals for the first time since 2019 when it opened the season 0-2 with losses to Virginia Tech and Illinois. Want to guess who the two losses are to this year?
After that start in 2019, the Tigers finished the season 12-5 with every loss coming against a ranked opponent.
The start of the schedule this year is tough. The Tigers don't wrestle in the Hearnes Center until January and face a third consecutive ranked opponent with Northern Iowa this week, though it will be at two-time individual champion Keegan O'Toole's high school, so that's fun at least.
The Big 12 is a tough wrestling conference, even once the Tigers are back home - which they will be for all five duals in January and six of their final eight overall with the other two coming at Oklahoma and Oklahoma State - they will face seven ranked opponents in eight matches.
But there's a lot of youth wrestling on the team right now. The Tigers are wrestling multiple freshmen and sophomores in every dual so far and All-American Rocky Elam hasn't wrestled yet this year.
The duals record might look tough for a little bit as those young guys get used to college competition and Elam works his way back to the mat, but the Tigers are going to be fine in the long run.
Question
I'm going to start making these sports related a little more often. I wanted the questions to be a way for us to et to know each other a little more and I appreciate all the great suggestions I've gotten through them, but let's get this turned into the sports bar I want this site to feel like.
1. Other than quarterback, where do you want the Tigers to focus most in the transfer portal? There's only so many resources to go around, so if you had to prioritize, where would your focus be after quarterback?
1. We finally saw what I thought the offense could look like on Saturday.
I wrote a good bit about the feeling I got from watching the offense in my column from yesterday, click here if you want to check that out. So let's look a bit more at the stats that back it up.
The first big one I noticed watching on Saturday was Luther Burden and Theo Wease getting yards after the catch. One of the coolest things I've had the pleasure to watch during games I'm covering is Luther Burden working after the catch. Just winding his way through defenses and through defenders with the ball in his hands. It's part of what makes him such a huge NFL prospect even with a somewhat disappointing final college season.
Last season, Burden averaged 8.4 yards after catch per reception and had two games with more than 100. He had 124 in the Memphis game, where he piled up 177 receiving yards, and he had 104 after the catch against Florida, a 154-yard receiving performance. He was regularly reaching 50 yards after the catch, especially early in the season.
This year, he's reached 50 yards after the catch three times. He had 75 against Boston College - a 117-yard receiving performance and the only game he's reached 100 yards this season - he had 54 against UMass - which, meh - and he had 65 Saturday out of 91 total yards.
Now, I want to make clear, I don't say this as a way to denigrate Burden or Wease's performances this year, yards after the catch are a product of both shifty receivers who can make a play and quarterbacks who put the ball in the best spot to get them room to work. It's not fully on either one and a lot of Burden's runs after the catch last year came on deep passes that just weren't hitting this season. Also not to say deep passes are the best way to get yards after the catch, look at Marquis Johnson, the deep passes the last two weeks have been nice to have back, but they've had exactly 5 yards after the catch combined on the two.
But Luther just hasn't had the chance to break free and move around after the catch that much this season. Teams have spent a lot of extra focus keeping him from getting around a solo defender, leading to him averaging just 6.3 yards after the catch per reception this year, but he had 9.3 per catch Saturday.
Wease wasn't as much of a run-after-catch guy last year, he had 282 of his 682 receiving yards come after the catch for an average of 5.8 per catch last season. His best game was 77 yards after the catch against Florida when he had one catch, a catch in the flat where he then ran past the entire team down the sideline, for 77 yards.
This season he has 302 yards after the catch out of 709 receiving yards, giving him an average of 5.9 yards after the catch per reception. He had 73 against Buffalo, which, meh.
The team as a whole just hasn't been as good after the catch. Last season, Mizzou averaged 6.7 yards after the catch per reception. This season, that number is just 5.7, which places the Tigers in a tie for 11th in the SEC with ... Oklahoma.
In my column, I talked about the difference I saw in the running game, but I wanted to dive more into the yards after the catch after watching Burden weaved his way through defenders on Saturday and reminded me how much fun that is to watch.
2. Im going to address something that I think is getting overblown, including by me right after the game. The defense hasn't been terrible and Corey Batoon isn't getting fired.
Look, the Tigers had one of the best defenses in the country last season that ended up losing five starters to the NFL and another couple to graduation. That's a lot to lose off of one defense. Add in changing coordinators and this year was never going to look as good. It just wasn't.
And yet, the Tigers have the No. 21 defense in the country in yards allowed at just 314.0 per game. That's seventh in the SEC because there's a lot of very good defenses in the SEC, but overall, very good.
That secondary that's been such an issue this year? They've led the Tigers to 181.5 passing yards allowed per game, which places Mizzou 18th in the country and third in the SEC.
The run defense has been a problem, no doubt, as has tackling the past couple of weeks, but the defense has been VERY good throughout the year. It's just not the same as last years. It's not as fun because there aren't as many turnovers, though the past few weeks have had some pretty important ones, and at key points the defense has fallen flat for sure. No denying that.
But come on guys, the Corey Batoon talk is outrageous. He's a first-year DC who's leading a top-21 defense that had to replace more than half of its starters. He's done a great job. Stop it.
3. Let's talk about bowls.
As fun as the chaos of the week was, it didn't help Mizzou's search for a good bowl. I explained a couple of other times what the bowl order is, but I'll do a quick runthrough here, too.
After the CFP gets it's SEC teams, the Citrus Bowl gets to pick from what's left. Then the conference works with the Texas Bowl, the Vegas Bowl, the Music City Bowl, the Gator Bowl, the Liberty Bowl and the ReliaQuest Bowl to select teams to go to each one. After that group is all selected, the Birmingham Bowl and the Gasparilla Bowl get to choose from what is left.
Because of this weekend's losses by teams fighting for playoff spots - Ole Miss, Alabama and Texas A&M - it's looking likely the SEC might only get three teams into the playoff depending on how these last couple of weeks play out. If Texas A&M turns around and beats Texas this week, then the Longhorns lose in the SEC championship, there might only be Georgia and Tennessee heading to the playoff. But what if Vanderbilt decides to play spoiler again and beats Tennessee? There might only end up being one two-loss SEC team and that team might be the auto-bid conference champion.
It's also possible the national media and the committee will really make the rest of the country hate the SEC by arguing one or two three-loss SEC teams should be in in front of one-loss teams with worse schedules. I was on board for the two-loss SEC teams last week saying they should get in over Indiana if Indiana lost to Ohio State big (it did) but three losses? No, no, no. We can't get to a point where the outcomes of the actual games don't matter anymore.
Also, we gotta go back to divisions. The conference championship scenarios across all the major conferences are insane.
But back to the bowls. Less SEC teams in the CFP means more teams competing for those bowl spots and with Alabama, Texas A&M and South Carolina all likely ending with three losses, that means Mizzou isn't all that close to the top of the list of the remaining teams.
Sporting News has it breaking down as: Alabama in the Citrus Bowl, South Carolina in the Gator Bowl, Texas A&M in the ReliaQuest Bowl, Mizzou facing Minnesota in the Music City Bowl, LSU in the Liberty Bowl and Ole Miss in the Texas Bowl for the three-loss SEC teams.
ESPN's Kyle Bonagura has Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl, Mizzou vs. USC in the Vegas Bowl, LSU in the Independence Bowl, South Carolina in the Music City Bowl, Ole Miss in the ReliaQuest Bowl, Alabama in the Citrus Bowl, Texas A&M in the Texas Bowl and LSU in the Gator Bowl.
ESPN's Mark Schlabach has Florida in the Liberty Bowl, Texas A&M in the Vegas Bowl, Oklahoma in the Independence Bowl, Ole Miss in the Music City Bowl, Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl, South Carolina in the Citrus Bowl LSU in the Texas Bowl and Mizzou vs. Louisville in the Gator Bowl.
So that gives us projections for Mizzou vs. Minnesota in Nashville on Dec. 30; vs. USC in Vegas on Dec. 27; or vs. Louisville in Jacksonville on Jan. 2.
Those actually aren't that different from where we were at last week, but any possibility for the Citrus Bowl has effectively been eliminated. Just for vacation purposes, I'd take a Nashville or Vegas trip for New Years. Either way, pretty fun.
Other Sports Thoughts
1. Yes, the men's basketball team is playing a truly terrible stretch of opponents. But there's still a lot you can actually take away from these past five games, and the past three especially.
Again, I want to make clear, AWFUL opponents. Mississippi Valley State is literally last in the KenPom rankings. The worst team in Division I. Arkansas-Pine Bluff isn't far behind at 362 out of 364 (Coppin State is in between them at 363 and I don't know if I've ever heard of Coppin State). Pacific is a bit better at No. 282, but we're staying near the bottom with Lindenwood (No. 351) this week.
Winning those games is nothing. Dominating those games over and over again is something.
Beating MVSU by 72 and putting up 111 points when MVSU followed it up with an 18-point loss to Kansas State is something. Beating Pacific by 16 more points than Arkansas did is something. Winning three straight games by 35+ points for the first time in school history is something.
Not having any second-half lag after that still seemed to be such an issue through the season's first three games is something.
The difference in the style of play is something, too.
The Tigers are getting to the free-throw line A LOT. That's certainly a product of playing bad opponents, it's easier to draw fouls against less-disciplined teams, but 41 free throw attempts against Pine Bluff, 23 against Pacific and 35 against MVSU is a lot of free throw attempts in any three-game stretch. The addition of Mark Mitchell and the maturation of Ant Robinson's game have brought a style of attacking the basket that the Tigers have been desperately needing the first two seasons of Dennis Gates' tenure in Columbia.
The rebounding has been so much better, too. Again, the number of rebounds itself is in part a product of facing bad opponents, I'm not trying to deny that or say you should expect the Tigers to outrebound their opponents by 10+ every game.
But there weren't stretches of rebounding like this the past two seasons. Even against the bad teams, Mizzou was beating them by getting a ton of steals and turning them into points on the other end, but the rebounding battle would still be close.
Missouri won the rebounding battle against SIU-Edwardsville 37-33, South Carolina State 33-26 and Central Arkansas 47-22 in the three biggest wins of last season.
The Tigers outrebounded MVSU 42-28, Pacific 38-32 and Pine Bluff 50-32.
And it's not just coming from Josh Gray or Mitchell. Robinson had 11 on Sunday, four players had at least five and another two had four. The rebounding all over the floor is better this year. I still expect them to lose the rebounding battles when they face better opponents, but if they can lose that battle by five or seven instead of 15 like they did so much of last year, that will be a huge plus.
The Tigers also gained 15 spots in the KenPom rankings after their past three games, raising to No. 49 as Mizzou has outscored its projections by 55 points, while it was 42 points behind projections through six games last year.
2. The shooting won't stay this good though, so don't get used to it.
We already saw a good bit of fall off against Pine Bluff. The Tigers had been crazy hot from behind the 3-point line against Eastern Washington, MVSU and Pacific, largely because of Caleb Grill's incredible stretch, but outside of Grill, the team shot just 5-of-24 from deep against Pine Bluff.
That happens to teams that shoot as much as Mizzou does, sometimes they're going to hit a ton and sometimes they aren't. It happens.
But even hitting only 28.1 percent from 3 on Sunday, the Tigers scored 112 points for a new season and Gates-era high, because they rebounded, attacked the basket and got to the free throw line 41 times.
The shooting isn't going to be incredible every night, but this team has aspects to it that will make up for bad shooting nights in a way last year's team definitely didn't.
3. Wrestling is off to a rough start, but the Tigers will be fine.
Mizzou has started the season 1-2 and is under .500 in duals for the first time since 2019 when it opened the season 0-2 with losses to Virginia Tech and Illinois. Want to guess who the two losses are to this year?
After that start in 2019, the Tigers finished the season 12-5 with every loss coming against a ranked opponent.
The start of the schedule this year is tough. The Tigers don't wrestle in the Hearnes Center until January and face a third consecutive ranked opponent with Northern Iowa this week, though it will be at two-time individual champion Keegan O'Toole's high school, so that's fun at least.
The Big 12 is a tough wrestling conference, even once the Tigers are back home - which they will be for all five duals in January and six of their final eight overall with the other two coming at Oklahoma and Oklahoma State - they will face seven ranked opponents in eight matches.
But there's a lot of youth wrestling on the team right now. The Tigers are wrestling multiple freshmen and sophomores in every dual so far and All-American Rocky Elam hasn't wrestled yet this year.
The duals record might look tough for a little bit as those young guys get used to college competition and Elam works his way back to the mat, but the Tigers are going to be fine in the long run.
Question
I'm going to start making these sports related a little more often. I wanted the questions to be a way for us to et to know each other a little more and I appreciate all the great suggestions I've gotten through them, but let's get this turned into the sports bar I want this site to feel like.
1. Other than quarterback, where do you want the Tigers to focus most in the transfer portal? There's only so many resources to go around, so if you had to prioritize, where would your focus be after quarterback?
