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1) This weekend in Mizzou sports would have made a fascinating psychological study. For the vast majority of both games--I'm going to say 3/4--everything was awful. The offense couldn't score and sure the defense was good but the offenses were so bad and the coaches were such morons who couldn't recruit the right guys or couldn't play the right guys or both that nothing good mattered because the constant suck was just all anyone could talk about. And then Missouri won a football game in overtime on a ballsy call and it won a basketball game in overtime when three guys showed up and started actually making shots and we're back to thinking Missouri is going to have to fend off other programs who want to hire Eli Drinkwitz and that Missouri basketball is on an upward trajectory and this whole redoing the roster thing might just work out pretty well after all.
I say all the time it's never as good as you think it is when it's good and it's never as bad as you think it is when it's bad. All I know is God bless the Internet, which has given us a place to record and maintain all of these takes for eternity. Football games last 60 minutes (or more) and basketball games last 40 minutes (or more) and despite lessons virtually every single week that we should withhold judgment until all of those minutes have actually occurred, it is physically impossible for us to do so. I do not say this to make fun of anyone. Trust me. There's only one difference between some of you and me: You put your takes out here for all of us to read and I put them in private text conversations that don't make the Internet. I'm not saying any of the things that were posted mid-game shouldn't have crossed your minds or weren't reasonable (well, some of them probably weren't reasonable). I'm just really fascinated by the emotional swings of being a sports fan. I'm not sure there's anything quite like it in the world. Even though we know it's not true, we look at every moment as the one that is going to swing the game for or against our team.
In the football game on Saturday there were 133 plays. In the basketball game there were 126 shots and another 33 turnovers. That's a whole bunch of opportunities for both teams to change the way things are going. But it's simply impossible in the middle of it to remind ourselves that there's a long way to go and that both teams are actually going to go ahead and stay on the field and the court and give a representative effort to end the game with more points.
Really, I'm not making fun of anyone. I considered going back and finding some of the most hyperbolic posts in the game threads for both teams to illustrate the point I was making, but then I thought that would be mean because I'm really not trying to single anyone out. We ALL do it. It's the emotion of a fan in the middle of the game. It's why we watch. And if your team ends up winning twice in overtime it can make for some pretty fantastically entertaining day after reading.
2) So I want to go big picture on both wins from this weekend and then I'll get into a little bit more specific stuff in both football and basketball. Here's what each game means for each team:
Football: It's huge. I think the win over Florida means Missouri salvaged something out of the season. The Tigers can still finish anywhere between 6-7 and 8-5 so the script is yet to be fully written, but 24 days ago they were 3-4, hadn't beaten a Power Five team and hadn't covered a spread. There were people who legitimately thought they had won their last game. Since then they've won three out of four, including three SEC East games with the only loss a not embarrassing effort against the best team in the country and they're guaranteed to play in a bowl game. I'm not going to throw a parade for 6-6 and it's still fair to ask why it took nine weeks for the defense to show up and there are questions about the quarterback and what they'll do without Tyler Badie and plenty of other things. But considering where they were less than a month ago, this is about as close to the best case scenario as you could have imagined on the morning of the Vanderbilt game. Eli Drinkwitz clearly didn't lose the locker room and he has tangible proof to continue to sell recruits that what he's doing is working and is going to continue to trend upward. This season can't end up as an A in my book, but it's almost certainly at least a C+ and that's not bad considering what looked possible not long ago.
Basketball: One win is almost never all that huge in basketball. They're going to play 32 games and a win over SMU in front of tens of fans in a small college gym in Jacksonville on Saturday night is very unlikely to be anything we look back at as a major turning point. The win last night doesn't necessarily take single-digit wins off the table, but I think it reinforces the fact that it's very unlikely. There are going to be nights when you shoot it well, there are going to be nights when the other team collapses (personally, I think SMU is at least 51% responsible for Missouri winning that game). Last night revealed--or continued to reveal--that this team and this roster have plenty of problems. But it also revealed that it's capable of playing good basketball and beating what is probably a better team. Nobody should ever apologize for a win. It may not turn the tide of the season or anything, but it's a lot better than the alternative.
3) Because postgame was delayed, I didn't get into specific game thoughts about the win over SMU. So here are some from last night's game specifically:
*This team is better when Kobe Brown is looking to score. He should lead Mizzou in shot attempts in virtually every game.
*They're going to have to play small and suffer some of the consequences of that. That doesn't mean they never play Jordan Wilmore or Yaya Keita, but their best lineups right now do not include either of the more traditional big men.
*DaJuan Gordon showed me some things last night. He's the best athlete on this team and he's capable of being its second leading scorer.
*Ronnie DeGray is kind of Gordon's exact opposite. He's not a high flyer and nothing he does is necessarily going to jump off the page at you, but he's just effective. Missouri loses last night without DeGray and it might have lost to Central Michigan without him too.
*Put me down as somewhat concerned about the point guard position. Boogie Coleman had a really rough night last night. He was 2-11 from the floor for five points. He had seven assists, but he also had six turnovers and a couple of them came at times that I thought they were going to derail the comeback and get Missouri beat. Cuonzo Martin has said he doesn't want Kobe Brown spending too much time as this team's point guard, but when Coleman is struggling (and yes, it's early, but he's struggled more than he hasn't so far), there's no other option. Anton Brookshire simply isn't ready yet.
4) I hate that we're four games into the season and already have reached the point where the only basketball discussion we can have is if or when the coach should be fired. I understand that's kind of what comes with losing to UMKC in the second game of the season. But the earliest there's even any point whatsoever to have this discussion is in the last week of the season and there are 25 to 30 more games to play before we get there. Kind of like the game last night, there's no choice but to let the rest of the thing unfold and see how it goes before making a full judgment. I understand the skepticism. I still feel like this team is below .500 and there will need to be a long assessment after that happens about whether the roster and the staff as currently constituted will give you hope for next year. And it's fine to have some opinions on what the answer to those questions will be. But you also have to be willing to change those opinions as more evidence comes in. That's for both sides. If you're convinced Cuonzo can't get it done here and this program isn't going to be any good until he's gone, that's fine, but you have to be willing to change your mind if he gets this team to gel and it's better than you think it can be. And on the other side, if you want to call everyone who thinks Cuonzo should be fired at the end of this season an idiot, you have to be willing to acknowledge that maybe they're not wrong if Missouri continues to average 22 points in the first half and loses more games like the one against UMKC and isn't competitive in the SEC. There's a lot of basketball to be played. Let's maybe watch it before we make every possession a referendum on the coach's job.
