It’s Monday morning, so it’s time for me to let you all know what’s been on my mind the past week.
Today has some men’s basketball, some football and we’ll finish with some women’s basketball. A little more variety than we’ve had recently.
MEN'S BASKETBALL THOUGHTS
1. Saturday’s loss was up there with the worst losses of the season just because of the way it played out.
Losing at Vanderbilt really isn’t that bad for the reputation, the Commodores have been very good at home and Missouri isn't the first ranked team to lose there, but the Tigers had the game won and committed multiple errors on the way to essentially ending the hopes for an SEC Tournament double-bye.
Missouri went from controlling its own destiny to needing either Tennessee, Florida or Alabama to lose twice this week.
It’s not impossible. Alabama hosts No. 3 Florida and plays at No. 1 Auburn to finish the regular season, so it’s entirely possible the Tide will lose two.
Tennessee plays at Ole Miss and hosts South Carolina, that one feels close to impossible.
Florida is at Alabama at hosts Ole Miss.
I think Alabama losing two is the most likely in that group, I don't have a ton of faith in Ole Miss to beat either Tennessee or Florida, so I guess I'm telling you to root for Florida and Auburn this week.
But just because the Tigers lost, doesn’t mean all the good things everyone was thinking about this team are gone.
They still have the ability to shoot past just about anybody when the offense is operating well. They can still defend away from the basket and play in transition, they can still play offensively both outside and inside very effectively.
But teams have figured out that Missouri doesn’t have much rim protection and they’ve found ways through the zone to get the ball inside without Tiger hands getting in the way quite as much.
Sports are about responses.
