30 Years, 30 Games, 30 Days: #30
Missouri goes in front of the press to preview the 2017 football season on July 13. That is exactly 30 days away. Over the next 30 days, to lead up to the unofficial kickoff of the college football season, PowerMizzou.com will take a look back at the 30 best Tiger games in the last 30 years.
In the course of compiling this list, there was no set criteria. I looked at the most memorable games, the most entertaining games, the most important games to the program at the time. All of these factored in when I put together the list. It is an entirely subjective list sure to inspire plenty of disagreement.
We start the countdown today with Game No. 30.
Missouri 28, Arkansas 24 -- Columbia MO -- November 25, 2016
Barry Odom's first season as Mizzou head coach did not go well. By the time the Arkansas Razorbacks came to town on the day after Thanksgiving, Missouri had been playing for nothing for three weeks. The Tigers had nothing on the line and frankly neither did the Razorbacks. They were 7-4 and more or less locked into their bowl fate.
Arkansas jumped to a 24-7 halftime lead and the Tigers looked to be headed to their seventh loss in eight SEC games. The small crowd was uninterested and the players on the field seemed to care only slightly more. Thirty minutes remained in a season that everyone was ready to see come to an end.
And then everything changed.
With 1,000-yard rusher Damarea Crockett suspended, Nate Strong got the Tigers started with a touchdown a little more than three minutes into the second half to draw Mizzou to within 24-14. Ten minutes later Drew Lock hit Jonathon Johnson for a 67-yard touchdown that capped a 96-yard drive and pulled the Tigers within a field goal.
With 12:48 to go, Strong scored again, putting Missouri in the lead for the first time all day. A much maligned Mizzou defense held Arkansas at bay the rest of the way and Missouri came up with a 28-24 win that put a happy feeling at the end of a miserable season.
Lock threw for 212 second half yards and J'Mon Moore went over 1,000 receiving yards for the season. Missouri salvaged a win in the regular season finale and in the process set a record for the largest halftime deficit overcome in school history.
WHY IT MADE THE LIST: In a few months or years, we may look back at this game as meaningless. But at a time when everyone had given up on the Tigers and their first-year coach, this game showed the players had not. With nothing to play for, Missouri put together its best half of the season in the last half of the season. The optimists will say it serves as a springboard into Odom's second season. The pessimists will ask where that effort was for the first 11 games and insist it is a meaningless win at the end of a lost season. Time will tell which is true.