It's Monday morning, so it's time for me to let you all know what's been on my mind the past few days. Today, it's mostly basketball thoughts with a softball one at the end.
BASKETBALL THOUGHTS
1. This team is legit.
They're fun to watch, they're fun to cover and we've talked a few times about them being pretty solid and impressing me and everyone over and over agin. But with the Mississippi State win, I think we're talking about something pretty different.
I think we're talking about a team that can realistically get a double-bye in the SEC Tournament and be a favorite to make it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
I'm trying not to get overly-hyped up about the possibilities of this team, but when they put up a game like Saturday on the road against a ranked team that has been a bugaboo for the Tigers since they joined the SEC, I'm struggling to find downsides about the squad.
Obviously, a team that relies on shooting from deep as much as the Tigers have recently is liable to have a poor game here or there. What happens if Caleb Grill isn't having another game where he hits five attempts from deep? What happens if the team doesn't get to that magic number of eight made 3s that, so far, has guaranteed a win? (The Tigers are 13-0 when making at least eight 3s).
Well, they've proven they can play that way if need be like they did in the Border War where Mizzou was just 4-of-13 from deep without Grill.
The defense is legitimate, not just a chaos force like the 2022-23 defense was, relying on D'Moi Hodge to get five or more steals in a game. No, this year's team can just flat-out guard good players.
Josh Hubbard had a 24-point performance for Mississippi State, but the Tigers have held multiple leading scorers below their average through a very tough stretch. They held Ole Miss leading scorer Sean Pedulla under his average (it was close, he averages 15.2 and they held him to 15, so really they just kept him from going over his average), Texas leading scorer Tre Johnson they held to well under (20.1 average and a 12-point performance on 3-of-15 shooting) and did the same with Arkansas star freshman Boogie Fland (19.0 average and a four-point performance on 2-of-13 shooting. Though he had a hand injury that then took him out for the rest of the season).
That's a stretch of a lot of very good players, including a couple of one-and-done freshmen expected to go high in the draft, who the Tigers have forced into repeated bad shots and turnovers.
When this team is hitting shots like it did against Mississippi State, I'm not sure there are many teams that can keep up, especially if Grill is feeling confident enough to hit a spot-up shot from nearly mid court (that was one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen in a game I covered).
But even when they aren't, the ability to get to the free-throw line and defend other team's best players should still set them up to at least be competitive in every matchup the rest of the way.
2. Which leads me to thinking that, once again, expectations have changed for the season.
I didn't want to just re-write my column from after the Florida win, but at the time, I called that the resume-defining win of the season for Mizzou.
I think the Tigers just added a new one to the top of the list.
I mentioned it in the Mississippi State game thread, but because of how that game played out - great shooting, a rebounding masterclass, a late first-half run to take a double-digit lead into the break and then no major lull after the break - I think the Mississippi State game is the best I have seen the Tigers play in four years of regularly covering the team. ...
