Mizzou redefines the possibilities with win in Lexington
Missouri won a football game in Lexington, KY for the first time since 2013 on Saturday night. The Tigers spotted the Kentucky Wildcats a 14-0 lead and then stormed their way to a convincing 38-21 win over the Wildcats.
So is it time to ask if these Tigers are capable of doing something else they did back in 2013? It's close.
The other thing, of course, is winning the SEC East. In 2013, Mizzou won 48-17 at Kentucky when Dorial Green-Beckham scored four touchdowns and Henry Josey added two more. That game was actually the sixth on Missouri's SEC schedule. It came four weeks after the season-changing win at Georgia, three weeks after Maty Mauk devoured Florida and just ahead of wins over ranked squads from Ole Miss and Texas A&M. Beating Kentucky in 2013 was less of a springboard and more of a near certainty amid a bunch of potential landmines.
This time around, there was nothing certain about a win over the Wildcats. Not before the game, which Mizzou entered as 2.5 point underdogs and losers of seven of eight in the series. And certainly not 15 minutes in when the TIgers trailed 14-0, showing little resistance on defense, less firepower on offense and perhaps least of all any inkling of a spark and actual desire to be playing the game.
And then, thanks to punter Luke Bauer and freshman wide receiver Marquis Johnson, the Tigers took off. From the opening 15 minutes until Kentucky's last-ditch meaningless drive that fell short, Mizzou outscored the Wildcats 38-7 and outgained them 309-80. Mizzou racked up four sacks, went 6/6 in the red zone and exorcised a generation's worth of demons against Kentucky by refusing to leave the game in the hands of the officials or at the mercy of a never-seen-that-before moment.
The win moved Missouri to 6-1 on the season, 2-1 in SEC play. The lone loss was a game Missouri easily could have--and maybe should have--won against an LSU team that's set to move up from No. 22 in the country after walloping Auburn 48-18 on Saturday night.
Following that loss last week, Eli Drinkwitz and his players stressed that everything they wanted to achieve still lied ahead of them. But the only way any of it was going to happen was with a win over the Wildcats. Missouri and Kentucky have played 11 times before Saturday as members of the same conference. The winner of the head-to-head matchup has finished higher in the division standings all 11 times (Kentucky 7, Mizzou 4). So, in all likelihood, Missouri wasn't finishing any higher than third in the East if it didn't win on Saturday.
But it did. And now, the ceiling of this team has been raised.
Drinkwitz came into this season with a 17-19 overall record at Mizzou. He had never finished above .500 and never won more than six games in a season. He's now at six this year in just seven weeks. But Missouri shouldn't be satisfied with just inching over the break even mark. Not anymore. This team has shown much more is possible.
The Tigers host South Carolina for Homecoming next week. They'll be favored, probably by five or six points. The Gamecocks are 2-4 overall, 1-3 in the SEC, after a 41-39 loss at home to Florida on Saturday. Mizzou then gets a week off to heal up before a trip to Georgia. They finish the season with home games against Tennessee and Florida and a road game at Arkansas the day after Thanksgiving.
Is it too soon to talk about running the table and winning the division? Yeah, probably. Especially because Georgia showed last week what happens when the Bulldogs take an opponent seriously. There was some hope in Lexington that Kentucky could knock off UGA, which had looked as close to pedestrian as it had in years for the first five weeks of the season. The Bulldogs led 34-7 in the first half and rolled to a 51-13 win. Missouri has to go to Georgia and you can bet the Tigers will have the Bulldogs' full attention, if not for what could be a 7-1 record this year, then certainly for a 26-22 near-miss in Columbia in 2022.
If Missouri does the unthinkable in three weeks, then of course you start to talk about the division. The Tigers will actually be the favorites to win it if they can pull that off. But for now, that's still a little cart in front of the horse. But nine wins isn't. Maybe even ten. With or without a division title, Missouri should absolutely be embarking on its best regular season since 2014, the last time they won more than eight games. It should absolutely be thinking about a New Year's Six bowl bid.
If last week's message was, "disappointed but not discouraged," this week's is much more upbeat. Asked how big the win was on the field by SEC Network analyst Cole Cubelic, Drinkwitz said simply "Why stop now? Let's keep going."
Indeed, why stop now? The Tigers have shown they've got what it takes to make this season special. They just won a road game against the biggest thorn in their side while getting almost nothing from their best player (3 touches, 21 yards for Luther Burden) and not even showing up until the game was 15 minutes old.
The ceiling? Who knows? It's a lot higher than we thought it was five hours ago.
PowerMizzou.com is a proud game day partner of Yuengling Traditional Lager the taste of game-time @yuenglingbeer #LagerUp.
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