We looked back in the first five version of this story and I had the Tigers going 4-1 against Memphis, Howard, Eastern Washington, Mississippi Valley State and Pacific.

I had this one written and ready to publish a few days before the KenPom rankings came out, but they have been added in since I had a day. Missouri opens the season at No. 53.

Now let’s look ahead to the next five in the schedule.

There’s a couple of very, very interesting games in this set of five. But first we have to get through two cupcakes.

Missouri opened the season last year beating Arkansas-Pine Bluff 101-79, the Lions went 13-17 the rest of the season and were 8-10 in Southwestern Athletic Conference play. Pine-Bluff was No. 354 out of 364 in the initial KenPom rankings.

The Lions were 0-4 against power-conference opponents, add in a loss to Gonzaga and they averaged a 30-point margin of defeat against their five toughest opponents.

Arkansas-Pine Bluff had four players start 20 games or more last year, but not one returned.

Solomon Bozeman is entering his fourth season at the helm of the program will need to replace a combined 144 starts from six departed players. The four players who returned combined for 11 starts.

Bozeman was able to get Quentin Bolton from Weston Carolina, Kleman Vuga from Monmouth, Christian Moore from North Texas, Mathew Spears from Division II LeMoyne Owen and Dennis Asoro from the community college ranks.

It’s a pretty fully-rebuilt team that wasn’t all that good to begin with. Should be another easy win for the Tigers.

Oh boy, hosting Lindenwood.

A team starting its third season in Division I. I think the goal of this game is allowing Lindenwood to fund its athletic department a little better, while staying in state. Yet somehow a tougher opponent than Pine-Bluff according to KenPom as the Lions open at No. 345.

The Lions went 11-21 in their first Division I season and 9-22 last year.

Do you really want to know who plays for Lindenwood? I don’t find it worth it right now.

Another matchup where if the Tigers don’t win by 30+, there’s a problem.

Now we’re into some interesting games. As we all know, California is a traditional opponent for the SEC/ACC Challenge. Ahh California, the team I most associate with the Atlantic Coast.

Ok, I won’t keep complaining about conference realignment that I don’t like (But come on. CALIFORNIA in the ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE is dumb).

Cal went 13-19 overall and 9-11 in the last year of the traditional Pac-12, dropping matchups against Pacific and Montana State early in a disappointing season.

The Golden Bears got surprisingly better in conference play last season, but still dropped an 87-76 matchup with Stanford in overtime in the first round of the final Pac-12 Tournament.

There’s not a lot of crossover from last year’s team out in Berkley, as no regular starter from last year’s roster is back this year. But second-year coach Mark Madsen was able to build the team off the transfer portal, starting with 6-foot, 7-inch sophomore guard Andrej Stojakovic, who made 10 starts for Stanford last year, averaging 7.8 points and 3.4 rebounds per game. The Golden Bears also added 6-8 junior forward BJ Omot from North Dakota, 6-7 junior forward Rytis Petraitis from Air Force, 6-7 junior forward Joshua Ola-Joseph from Minnesota, 6-3 senior guard Christian Tucker from UTSA, 6-9 graduate center Mady Sissoko from Michigan State, 6-10 junior forward Lee Dort from Vanderbilt and 6-2 junior guard DJ Campbell from Western Carolina.

So a fully revamped roster for the team’s first season in the ACC and opens the season at No. 135 in the KenPom rankings.

Somewhat hard to imagine a team this fully built out of the portal will have success early in the season against other power-conference opponents, especially without pulling in any top-100 portal recruits, but it will definitely be the Tigers’ toughest test since Game 1.

Now the big one. Kansas returns to Mizzou Arena. Why this game is at noon on a Sunday, I don’t know. Feels wrong.

The first two games since the return of the Border War in 2022 haven’t gone the way Missouri would have hoped. Kansas has averaged 18.5-point margins of victory, but the Tigers were able to keep it to single digits last year.

After making it to the Sweet 16 last year, Kansas enters the 2024-25 season as the favorite to win the expanded Big 12 as it has just about every year for the past forever. Last year was just the fourth time in 21 years the Jayhawks didn’t win the Big 12 in the regular season.

Kansas lost three players to graduation and another to the draft, but Bill Self hit the transfer portal hard and brought in one of the best portal classes in the country.

Graduate guard and Rock Bridge graduate Dajuan Harris Jr. returns for the Jayhawks alongside graduate center Hunter Dickinson and senior forward KJ Adams Jr.

The trio combined to average 39 points, 17.5 rebounds and 11.75 assists per game.

The other two starters will likely come from the group of AJ Storr, transfer from Wisconsin, Zeke Mayo, transfer from South Dakota State, Rylen Griffen, transfer from Alabama and David Coit, transfer from Northern Illinois. Mayo was a five-star transfer ranked No. 4, Storr was a four-star ranked No. 11, Griffen was a four-star ranked No. 55 and Coit was a four-star ranked No. 121 in our system.

Kansas opens the season at No. 6 in the KenPom rankings.

Whatever happens on the court, expect multiple renditions of “Mr. Brightside” whether prompted by the PA or not. Or maybe it’ll just be the alternate lyrics over and over and over and over again.

Well we got through the big games, back to a cupcake to finish off the stretch.

Long Island was 7-22 last season with a 6-10 record in Northeast Conference play. The Sharks played three games against power-conference opponents and lost by 20 to a bad UCLA team, 48 to a good Miami team and 22 to Rutgers.

Leading scorer Tai Strickland returns as a graduate guard after averaging 14.2 points and 4.0 rebounds per game last season. Sophomore guard Eric Acker returns after scoring 12.7 points per game for second on the team, while junior guard/forward Tana Kopa is back after being third on the team with an average of 12.0 points per game. So the Sharks return more of their production than most teams at their level.

Long Island is at No. 353 as the Tigers play their third team in the bottom 20 of the KenPom rankings in this group of five.

But that doesn’t mean this should be anything but a big Tiger win.

I said Missouri would be 4-1 coming into this five. And I think they’ll go 4-1 again in this group, so an 8-2 start to the season as Christmas break appears on the horizon.

Head on over to the Tiger Walk to discuss this story and so much more.