1) This weekend in Mizzou sports would have made a fascinating psychological study. For the vast majority of both games--I'm going to say 3/4--everything was awful. The offense couldn't score and sure the defense was good but the offenses were so bad and the coaches were such morons who couldn't recruit the right guys or couldn't play the right guys or both that nothing good mattered because the constant suck was just all anyone could talk about. And then Missouri won a football game in overtime on a ballsy call and it won a basketball game in overtime when three guys showed up and started actually making shots and we're back to thinking Missouri is going to have to fend off other programs who want to hire Eli Drinkwitz and that Missouri basketball is on an upward trajectory and this whole redoing the roster thing might just work out pretty well after all.
I say all the time it's never as good as you think it is when it's good and it's never as bad as you think it is when it's bad. All I know is God bless the Internet, which has given us a place to record and maintain all of these takes for eternity. Football games last 60 minutes (or more) and basketball games last 40 minutes (or more) and despite lessons virtually every single week that we should withhold judgment until all of those minutes have actually occurred, it is physically impossible for us to do so. I do not say this to make fun of anyone. Trust me. There's only one difference between some of you and me: You put your takes out here for all of us to read and I put them in private text conversations that don't make the Internet. I'm not saying any of the things that were posted mid-game shouldn't have crossed your minds or weren't reasonable (well, some of them probably weren't reasonable). I'm just really fascinated by the emotional swings of being a sports fan. I'm not sure there's anything quite like it in the world. Even though we know it's not true, we look at every moment as the one that is going to swing the game for or against our team.
In the football game on Saturday there were 133 plays. In the basketball game there were 126 shots and another 33 turnovers. That's a whole bunch of opportunities for both teams to change the way things are going. But it's simply impossible in the middle of it to remind ourselves that there's a long way to go and that both teams are actually going to go ahead and stay on the field and the court and give a representative effort to end the game with more points.
Really, I'm not making fun of anyone. I considered going back and finding some of the most hyperbolic posts in the game threads for both teams to illustrate the point I was making, but then I thought that would be mean because I'm really not trying to single anyone out. We ALL do it. It's the emotion of a fan in the middle of the game. It's why we watch. And if your team ends up winning twice in overtime it can make for some pretty fantastically entertaining day after reading.
2) So I want to go big picture on both wins from this weekend and then I'll get into a little bit more specific stuff in both football and basketball. Here's what each game means for each team:
Football: It's huge. I think the win over Florida means Missouri salvaged something out of the season. The Tigers can still finish anywhere between 6-7 and 8-5 so the script is yet to be fully written, but 24 days ago they were 3-4, hadn't beaten a Power Five team and hadn't covered a spread. There were people who legitimately thought they had won their last game. Since then they've won three out of four, including three SEC East games with the only loss a not embarrassing effort against the best team in the country and they're guaranteed to play in a bowl game. I'm not going to throw a parade for 6-6 and it's still fair to ask why it took nine weeks for the defense to show up and there are questions about the quarterback and what they'll do without Tyler Badie and plenty of other things. But considering where they were less than a month ago, this is about as close to the best case scenario as you could have imagined on the morning of the Vanderbilt game. Eli Drinkwitz clearly didn't lose the locker room and he has tangible proof to continue to sell recruits that what he's doing is working and is going to continue to trend upward. This season can't end up as an A in my book, but it's almost certainly at least a C+ and that's not bad considering what looked possible not long ago.
Basketball: One win is almost never all that huge in basketball. They're going to play 32 games and a win over SMU in front of tens of fans in a small college gym in Jacksonville on Saturday night is very unlikely to be anything we look back at as a major turning point. The win last night doesn't necessarily take single-digit wins off the table, but I think it reinforces the fact that it's very unlikely. There are going to be nights when you shoot it well, there are going to be nights when the other team collapses (personally, I think SMU is at least 51% responsible for Missouri winning that game). Last night revealed--or continued to reveal--that this team and this roster have plenty of problems. But it also revealed that it's capable of playing good basketball and beating what is probably a better team. Nobody should ever apologize for a win. It may not turn the tide of the season or anything, but it's a lot better than the alternative.
3) Because postgame was delayed, I didn't get into specific game thoughts about the win over SMU. So here are some from last night's game specifically:
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