2016-17 Hoops Prediction
Missouri begins the basketball season with an exhibition against Central Missouri on Friday night. The regular season opener is next Sunday against Alabama A&M. PowerMizzou.com takes a stab at predicting the Tigers' season.
NON-CONFERENCE
We will break games into three categories: Games Missouri should win, games it should lose and toss-ups.
LIKELY WINS: Games against Alabama A&M, Northwestern State, North Carolina Central, Miami (OH), Eastern Illinois and Lipscomb should be virtually automatic. All are home games against teams that the Tigers should handle with relative ease. So unless things go really wrong, Mizzou starts off with six wins in its pocket.
LIKELY LOSSES: Mizzou opens play in an in-season tournament against top-ten Xavier, which is a pretty certain loss. Same goes for Arizona's visit to Columbia. Those are the only two non-conference games that it would be a major upset for Missouri to win. That puts the Tigers at 6-2 headed into the swing games.
TOSS-UPS: The four games left (in order) are either Clemson or Davidson, an undetermined opponent in Orlando, Western Kentucky and Illinois. We're going to say the Tigers split the two in Orlando to come out of that tournament 1-2. Who they beat and who they lose to is impossible to forecast at this point. Western Kentucky should be a win. Illinois could go either way, but the Tigers are going to need to prove it, as they've hardly been stellar away from Mizzou Arena the last few years. We have that as a loss. So the swing games are 2-2, putting Missouri 8-4 entering SEC competition.
SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE
LIKELY WINS: It's tough to really forecast anything as a "likely" win for a team that has finished last in each of the previous two seasons. We're going to put home games against Auburn and LSU here, though it's admittedly perhaps a little bit generous to do so. That puts the running record at 10-4.
LIKELY LOSSES: Let's start with the road games. Missouri has been awful on the road and there are a few games it's simply very difficult to see them pulling off. Road games at Georgia, Arkansas, Florida and Texas A&M would qualify as big surprises. At home, we expect Mizzou loses to Kentucky and A&M again. That means six likely losses, putting our count at 10-10 so far.
TOSS-UPS: The swing games break down this way:
HOME: Ole Miss, South Carolina, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Alabama
ROAD: Alabama, Mississippi State, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Auburn
Arkansas isn't very good on the road, so we'll give the Tigers a win there (last year's game in Columbia notwithstanding). We'll also say Mizzou beats South Carolina and one of the other three. So the home record in swing games is 3-2.
The road slate? Well, the simple fact is, Missouri hasn't won a road game in the league in two years. It's kind of hard to pick them to do so. So we won't. For now, we'll say all five of them are losses. 0-5 in the road toss-ups.
THE POST-SEASON
We picked Mizzou to go 5-13 in the SEC. That's going to be good for probably the 13 seed in the league tournament, which means you're an underdog on day one of the event. For giggles, we'll say Missouri manages to win that one before falling in the next round. 1-1 in Nashville is our pick.
THE RESULTS
So here's what we come up with:
NON-CONFERENCE: 8-4
SEC: 5-13
POST-SEASON: 1-1
OVERALL PREDICTION: 14-18
It's an improvement from the last couple of years, but honestly, there's really nowhere to go but up. Obviously there are places Missouri can improve on this prediction, notably by winning away from Mizzou Arena. The minimum expectation level in year three needs to be .500. So the Tigers have to find a way to get at least a couple of wins we don't have them getting for it to be deemed significant progress in our estimation.
There is not much point of getting into job security speculation before a game has even been played. Everyone understands Kim Anderson is coaching for his job this year. What will be good enough to return for year four? Only Jim Sterk can determine that. The season is upon us. Let the games begin.