Whether you are looking for more space to host those game day parties or looking to upgrade, Stein & Summers is your #1 fan in helping you find the home of your dreams! We have over 100 licensed agents servicing Kansas City, St. Joseph, and surrounding areas - including Kansas! Interest rates are at a record low while homes sales prices are at a record high! Contact us today to get started.
1) So Missouri beat Alabama on Saturday, the Tigers' third win over a top ten team this season. I took a fair amount of heat for my immediate reaction after the game. And that's fine. I don't expect everyone to agree with me. Part of the trouble with doing what we do now is this: The job is no longer to report what happened because you guys all know that. The job is now to react to it and say what it means. And to do it immediately. When you do that, sometimes what you think right after the game isn't what you think a day or two later. My initial take was probably a little too negative. The headline is that Missouri beat Alabama, which is something nobody else in the SEC has done this year. That the Tigers remained in second place and remain the only team in the conference that has any chance (even though it's slim) to catch the Tide for the regular season title. That's the headline. That's the most important thing. Everything else is secondary. The fact that they nearly blew a 20-point lead in the last six minutes and that they looked disheveled and maybe even panicked doing so is part of the story. But it's not the most important part. It's in the second or third paragraph, not the first.
2) The win was important in the standings, but not because it means Missouri will move up. The chances of catching the Tide are still very remote. Alabama will be favored to win its last seven games. The toughest game Bama has left is at Arkansas, the second toughest is either at Mississippi State or home against Auburn. It is hard to see Bama losing more than one, MAYBE two. And even if Bama loses two, Missouri has to go unbeaten AND make up both the LSU and Vandy games and win both of those to win the SEC. So it's probably not happening even though Mizzou now has the tiebreaker.
But the Tigers kept themselves ahead of Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida and LSU with that win (all four are 6-4 right now). Three of those teams are almost certainly going to get a top four seed in the SEC tournament and a double bye. Two of them won't. Beating Bama gives Missouri the head to head tiebreaker over Tennessee and Arkansas (even if Mizzou loses the next game against the Razorbacks) if it comes down to those teams for a seed. The tiebreaker with LSU and Florida would be determined by the head to head games with those teams (there are different rules for multi team ties, but just if it comes down to Missouri and that team being tied). So Saturday's win was huge in terms of getting that top four seed.
3) Missouri should have a whole lot of wins coming up. The Tigers are through the tougher half of their schedule. The next six games are UGA, Arkansas, Texas A&M, South Carolina and two against Ole Miss. Missouri has already beaten three of those teams. Georgia and Ole Miss are playing better right now, but Missouri is better than both of them. The Tigers have a legitimate shot at 6-0. I'll give them an off night somewhere or a night where the other team plays well, but my expectation in the next three weeks is 5-1. If they do that, they should have a top four seed locked up even if they lose to Florida in the final game. That would put them 11-5 with the LSU and Vanderbilt games pending. I'd be very, very surprised if that's not good enough for a top four seed. In fact, by glancing at the remaining schedules of the other four teams they'll be competing with, I'd say it's nearly mathematically impossible for it not to get them a top four seed.
4) The question of what happens with the postponed games is still very much up in the air. Two of the seven games that were supposed to be played in the league Saturday weren't played. Two more games this week are already postponed.
We are at the point where, as Greg Sankey said last Saturday, everybody isn't going to play 18 games. There might still be room for Mizzou to get games against LSU and Vanderbilt in. If the Tigers lose another one, they can't make them all up. Which games get made up and which ones don't will be interesting. I'm not sure how the league will decide. On one hand, you'd like to play Vanderbilt because you'd almost certainly get another win. On the other, if you only get one, you'd probably rather play LSU because even losing to LSU would help your power rankings and metrics more than beating Vandy would. This team is now in the position where we're talking about what the seed will be, not if it will be in the tournament. Again, I have no clue how these decisions will be made, but if Mizzou has any input, if it comes down to having a choice which games to make up, the Tigers should push for the ones against the better teams, not the weaker ones.
5) What makes this a successful season? First of all, a top four spot in the SEC and a borderline 20 win regular season when you're only playing 25-27 games is successful. Even for those who were optimistic before the season, I think that would have been near the ceiling of what you would have hoped for. I am a huge proponent of not judging the entire season by what happens in March. If Missouri finishes 18-7 and top four in the SEC, it's a good year regardless of what happens beyond that. March will determine whether it's a great year. My goal for this team in the tournament is very simple: Win a game. Just one. I think they're good enough to win more. They'll probably be seeded to win at least two. And if they don't do that, you might feel a little hollow and disappointed. But this program hasn't won an NCAA Tournament game since March of 2010 (Mike Anderson beat Clemson that year in the first round). By the time they play their next NCAA Tournament game, the Tigers will be at least 4017 days removed from the last one. I know you'll hope for more and that's fair. But simply winning a game in the tournament will mark undisputed progress for this program. That's where we start. Anything beyond that is gravy.
