Commentary: How many times can Mizzou pick itself up?

Eli Drinkwitz said last week he did not believe in moral victories. Senior wide receiver and team captain Barrett Banister said it again on Saturday night after a 26-22 loss to No. 1 Georgia. So let’s say that. Sports are the ultimate results-oriented business. The scoreboard tells the story and the end of the story is all that really matters.

The scoreboard says Missouri is 2-3. The scoreboard says Missouri has lost its last two games by a combined seven points in heartbreaking fashion.

But if you admit that, you also have to admit there’s a lot more to the story than the last line.

“Our record doesn’t show it, but it’s what we’ve been building,” Banister said. “We just haven’t found ways to finish those games.”

Coming off the ultimate gut punch in a 17-14 loss to Auburn last week, a game Drinkwitz said the Tigers lost twice, Missouri picked itself back up off the mat. It led the best team in the country and the defending national champions for nearly 56 minutes. The defense bowed up and held one of the country’s most lethal offenses to four field goals 50 of those minutes. There were so many things to like.

When Georgia took the lead on a touchdown run from Daijun Edwards with 4:03 left to go, there may have been some air let out of the crowd. There almost certainly was a sense of, “Well, it was fun while it lasted, but…”

“We got four minutes and three seconds left to go beat the number one team in the country,” Banister said. “I think if you asked anybody on this team, we would have signed up for that. Defense played their guts out, crowd was awesome. It was there for us. We just didn’t get it done.”

Again. Losing to No. 1 Georgia is not the same as losing to an Auburn team that’s about to run its coach out of town. Losing because the best team in the country out-executed you and made the plays necessary to win in the final ten minutes is not the same as losing because you missed a chip-shot field goal and dropped the ball three feet from victory. But the result is the same.

“It sucked last week and it sucks again,” defensive end Isaiah McGuire said.

“That’s two games in a row,” Drinkwitz said. “We’ve just got to learn to finish.”

The question now is how many times a team can drag itself back off the canvas. The Tigers did it a week ago. The 17-14 loss to Auburn was as much of a gut-punch as a team can possibly take. And Missouri recovered from it. Rocky Balboa lost in the first movie too. But he came back and beat Apollo Creed in Rocky II. Missouri came out and went punch for punch with the champ. And ended up back on the mat.

“We came out of this game knowing we can play with anybody and we can beat anybody,” safety Joseph Charleston said.

And he’s right. Missouri proved on Saturday night that on the right night, it can play with absolutely any team in college football. But how often can it repeat this effort? If Missouri had played this game four times, it would be either 3-2 or 4-1. If it plays this game seven more times, it may end up 9-3. But Missouri had not played this game before Saturday night. It must prove it is capable of playing this game again. Missouri’s ceiling—or pretty close to it—showed up for the first time this year. And the ceiling is good. But the floor? We’ve seen that too and the floor is going to get this team 4-and-8.

Drinkwitz has been fond of telling us all over the course of his three years here that progress isn’t linear. He’s certainly right about that. Most teams have ups and downs. Missouri’s trajectory is pointing up from where it’s been. This year’s Tigers have gone from a team that couldn’t be bothered to show up to a team that lost on the final play of the game to a team that lost to maybe the best team in the country by four points.

That’s improvement any way you slice it. But there has to be a payoff for the improvement.

“Eventually the dam breaks and the water comes,” Banister said. “It’s tough. I’m sure the Mizzou fans feel the same way we do. It’s hard, but we took steps in the right direction.”

The dam sprung some leaks on Saturday night. Unfortunately, Mizzou was playing one of the few teams good enough to stick its fingers in the holes and keep it from breaking. The optimists will see the water leaking through those cracks and think the breakthrough is coming. The pessimists will see a dam that may crack, but never breaks, because it hasn’t broken yet.

Which one is true remains to be seen.

“Five games into the season,” Drinkwitz said. “There’s a lot of football left.”

What Mizzou does with that time remains to be see. For now, it’s back to work on Sunday morning to pick themselves up and dust themselves off in time for a trip to the Swamp.