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1) I'm not ready to say Missouri saved its basketball season...but I'm ready to say it did enough to give itself a chance to save it. Nobody would call the game against Illinois a must win, but it was. Even after the loss, the Illini are 46th at KenPom (Mizzou is 52) so that means its Missouri's best win this season. Three of the losses are to 7, 28 and 50. So those are good losses. Temple is at 59, so Missouri would like to see the Owls do enough to get in the top 50 and give the Tigers a 2-3 record so far against top 50 teams which is very respectable. Down at 293 is Charleston Southern and there's really no getting rid of that.
2) So what's it take? They need to beat Chicago State and West Virginia to finish the non-con at 9-4. With the Charleston loss, 9-4 needs to happen. At that point, it's my opinion it takes 10-8 to feel pretty good in the SEC. The league just isn't as good as we thought. There are three top 25 teams, but none better than 15 and just six in the top 50. That's decent, but not good enough where a sub 500 record is going to get you in, especially with Missouri's non-con slate. We'll take a look at the SEC on New Year's Day, but here's the path to 10-8 in the league for me:
Wins: Home vs Tennessee, Texas A&M, Georgia, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Alabama
Away vs South Carolina, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt
Losses: Home vs Florida and Auburn
Away vs Kentucky, Mississippi State, Alabama, LSU, Arkansas, Ole Miss
Honestly, that doesn't look hard to me. It's 7-2 at home with two top 50 wins. It's 3-6 on the road with the best win being at No. 89 South Carolina.
That would put Mizzou 19-12 entering the SEC Tournament. With a win in the tourney opener, you're looking at 20-13. It's probably not lock category. Lock means you'd need one or two more. But it would give you a pretty good chance. To me, it still looks not only realistic, but it looks like something that should happen if this program is close to where we thought it was entering the season.
3) Old dogs rarely learn new tricks. Cuonzo Martin talked a lot about offense and scoring and playing faster. And his team is 20th in defensive efficiency, 116th in offensive efficiency and 271st in adjusted tempo. In other words, it's a completely Cuonzo Martin team. This isn't a criticism. If you win games, it doesn't matter how you do it. It's just interesting to me because we thought one of the reasons this team was better was that it had scoring options and the personnel to play in a different way. But it's not playing in a different way and it's not going to. The adjustment is going to have to come from fans, not the team. Fans are going to have to learn to love 65-62 games that are cage matches. You're not winning every game by that score. You're going to have to hit 75 a couple times to win in the SEC. Because while Missouri's defense is really good, other teams have missed shots too. There are going to be days where the other team is shooting well even when you're playing good defense. And on those days, Missouri is going to have to be able to match the opponent. The question is if they can.
4) The biggest surprise on this team for me is Mitchell Smith. He's the starting power forward. He's getting (and deserving) minutes we thought were going to go to Kobe Brown and Tray Jackson. Good for him. I didn't see it coming. There are going to be days Missouri is going to need help from Brown and/or Jackson, but Smith has worked his way into a solid contributor for an SEC team...which wasn't something I saw coming even at the end of last year.
5) The main area that has to improve is the jump shooting. Three-point shooting, where Mizzou is 335th in the country at 27.1%, but also just jump shooting in general. I saw a stat last week that Missouri was the worst Power Five shooting team in the country on unguarded jumpers (I'm not going to promise it's true, but I can promise I read it). You'd like to think that will improve. If it doesn't, anything we talked about tournament wise is probably out the window.
6) There are two spots left on the coaching staff. Eli Drinkwitz has to hire an offensive line coach and a wide receivers coach. I don't think those will be finalized before Christmas. Drinkwitz said his target date to have everything finished was January 6th. I'm not going to start breaking down candidates for the positions because I don't know enough about random position coaches to tell you who they are. But I think we'll have the full staff picture within a couple of weeks.
7) Speaking of staff, we reported yesterday that Missouri is going to hire Zac Woodfin as its strength coach. His last job was at Kansas. I knew what the reaction was going to be from fans, but I've got to tell you it's utterly ridiculous. Who cares where the guy worked? If he's good at his job, you hire him. Did anybody turn up their noses at Lauren Aldridge or Mark Smith? I understand the emotional aspect. I get that you all hate the Jayhawks. But if they have someone in their organization you can hire to make yours better, you do it. I've told you guys plenty that people involved in the sport (and this even goes to most of us covering it) just don't look at it the same. Coaches look at it as a paycheck. Now, there are some guys who would probably say "I'd never work at a rival." But there are a lot more that would say "you're paying me? Cool. Sign me up." We're cheering for clothes here. If another school is going to pay more money to wear those clothes, the vast majority of people who have a job in college football are going to take it.
8) Over the next few days, @mitchell4d is going to take a look back at last football season and what it means going into next season. We didn't have a chance to do it after the last game because we started covering a coaching search about 17 hours later. So we're going to fill some of the holiday break by looking at what's being lost, what's coming back and how it fits with Drinkwitz for the 2020 season.
9) At the suggestion of one of our loyal subscribers (I don't remember who) one other thing we're going to do is look back at some highlights of the last decade. Starting on Friday, I'll have a five part look at the top ten of the 2010s in five different categories:
Top ten football players
Top ten basketball players
Top ten recruits
Top ten surprises
Top ten overall athletes
I've got all the lists together. We'll run a different one every day. Then you guys can tell me how stupid I am.
10) The final thought is just a hope that you all can have a good holiday season, whichever holiday you may be celebrating, and that Mizzou can allow our staff to do the same. If news happens, we're still going to be covering it over the next week, but to be honest, we're hoping for a slow week leading up to the Chicago State game next Monday night. Enjoy some terrible meaningless bowl games, eat and drink too much and spend some time with your real families (as opposed to the dysfunctional mess you call your Internet family on here).
1) I'm not ready to say Missouri saved its basketball season...but I'm ready to say it did enough to give itself a chance to save it. Nobody would call the game against Illinois a must win, but it was. Even after the loss, the Illini are 46th at KenPom (Mizzou is 52) so that means its Missouri's best win this season. Three of the losses are to 7, 28 and 50. So those are good losses. Temple is at 59, so Missouri would like to see the Owls do enough to get in the top 50 and give the Tigers a 2-3 record so far against top 50 teams which is very respectable. Down at 293 is Charleston Southern and there's really no getting rid of that.
2) So what's it take? They need to beat Chicago State and West Virginia to finish the non-con at 9-4. With the Charleston loss, 9-4 needs to happen. At that point, it's my opinion it takes 10-8 to feel pretty good in the SEC. The league just isn't as good as we thought. There are three top 25 teams, but none better than 15 and just six in the top 50. That's decent, but not good enough where a sub 500 record is going to get you in, especially with Missouri's non-con slate. We'll take a look at the SEC on New Year's Day, but here's the path to 10-8 in the league for me:
Wins: Home vs Tennessee, Texas A&M, Georgia, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Alabama
Away vs South Carolina, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt
Losses: Home vs Florida and Auburn
Away vs Kentucky, Mississippi State, Alabama, LSU, Arkansas, Ole Miss
Honestly, that doesn't look hard to me. It's 7-2 at home with two top 50 wins. It's 3-6 on the road with the best win being at No. 89 South Carolina.
That would put Mizzou 19-12 entering the SEC Tournament. With a win in the tourney opener, you're looking at 20-13. It's probably not lock category. Lock means you'd need one or two more. But it would give you a pretty good chance. To me, it still looks not only realistic, but it looks like something that should happen if this program is close to where we thought it was entering the season.
3) Old dogs rarely learn new tricks. Cuonzo Martin talked a lot about offense and scoring and playing faster. And his team is 20th in defensive efficiency, 116th in offensive efficiency and 271st in adjusted tempo. In other words, it's a completely Cuonzo Martin team. This isn't a criticism. If you win games, it doesn't matter how you do it. It's just interesting to me because we thought one of the reasons this team was better was that it had scoring options and the personnel to play in a different way. But it's not playing in a different way and it's not going to. The adjustment is going to have to come from fans, not the team. Fans are going to have to learn to love 65-62 games that are cage matches. You're not winning every game by that score. You're going to have to hit 75 a couple times to win in the SEC. Because while Missouri's defense is really good, other teams have missed shots too. There are going to be days where the other team is shooting well even when you're playing good defense. And on those days, Missouri is going to have to be able to match the opponent. The question is if they can.
4) The biggest surprise on this team for me is Mitchell Smith. He's the starting power forward. He's getting (and deserving) minutes we thought were going to go to Kobe Brown and Tray Jackson. Good for him. I didn't see it coming. There are going to be days Missouri is going to need help from Brown and/or Jackson, but Smith has worked his way into a solid contributor for an SEC team...which wasn't something I saw coming even at the end of last year.
5) The main area that has to improve is the jump shooting. Three-point shooting, where Mizzou is 335th in the country at 27.1%, but also just jump shooting in general. I saw a stat last week that Missouri was the worst Power Five shooting team in the country on unguarded jumpers (I'm not going to promise it's true, but I can promise I read it). You'd like to think that will improve. If it doesn't, anything we talked about tournament wise is probably out the window.
6) There are two spots left on the coaching staff. Eli Drinkwitz has to hire an offensive line coach and a wide receivers coach. I don't think those will be finalized before Christmas. Drinkwitz said his target date to have everything finished was January 6th. I'm not going to start breaking down candidates for the positions because I don't know enough about random position coaches to tell you who they are. But I think we'll have the full staff picture within a couple of weeks.
7) Speaking of staff, we reported yesterday that Missouri is going to hire Zac Woodfin as its strength coach. His last job was at Kansas. I knew what the reaction was going to be from fans, but I've got to tell you it's utterly ridiculous. Who cares where the guy worked? If he's good at his job, you hire him. Did anybody turn up their noses at Lauren Aldridge or Mark Smith? I understand the emotional aspect. I get that you all hate the Jayhawks. But if they have someone in their organization you can hire to make yours better, you do it. I've told you guys plenty that people involved in the sport (and this even goes to most of us covering it) just don't look at it the same. Coaches look at it as a paycheck. Now, there are some guys who would probably say "I'd never work at a rival." But there are a lot more that would say "you're paying me? Cool. Sign me up." We're cheering for clothes here. If another school is going to pay more money to wear those clothes, the vast majority of people who have a job in college football are going to take it.
8) Over the next few days, @mitchell4d is going to take a look back at last football season and what it means going into next season. We didn't have a chance to do it after the last game because we started covering a coaching search about 17 hours later. So we're going to fill some of the holiday break by looking at what's being lost, what's coming back and how it fits with Drinkwitz for the 2020 season.
9) At the suggestion of one of our loyal subscribers (I don't remember who) one other thing we're going to do is look back at some highlights of the last decade. Starting on Friday, I'll have a five part look at the top ten of the 2010s in five different categories:
Top ten football players
Top ten basketball players
Top ten recruits
Top ten surprises
Top ten overall athletes
I've got all the lists together. We'll run a different one every day. Then you guys can tell me how stupid I am.
10) The final thought is just a hope that you all can have a good holiday season, whichever holiday you may be celebrating, and that Mizzou can allow our staff to do the same. If news happens, we're still going to be covering it over the next week, but to be honest, we're hoping for a slow week leading up to the Chicago State game next Monday night. Enjoy some terrible meaningless bowl games, eat and drink too much and spend some time with your real families (as opposed to the dysfunctional mess you call your Internet family on here).
