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Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning

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1) I'm not ready to say Missouri saved its basketball season...but I'm ready to say it did enough to give itself a chance to save it. Nobody would call the game against Illinois a must win, but it was. Even after the loss, the Illini are 46th at KenPom (Mizzou is 52) so that means its Missouri's best win this season. Three of the losses are to 7, 28 and 50. So those are good losses. Temple is at 59, so Missouri would like to see the Owls do enough to get in the top 50 and give the Tigers a 2-3 record so far against top 50 teams which is very respectable. Down at 293 is Charleston Southern and there's really no getting rid of that.

2) So what's it take? They need to beat Chicago State and West Virginia to finish the non-con at 9-4. With the Charleston loss, 9-4 needs to happen. At that point, it's my opinion it takes 10-8 to feel pretty good in the SEC. The league just isn't as good as we thought. There are three top 25 teams, but none better than 15 and just six in the top 50. That's decent, but not good enough where a sub 500 record is going to get you in, especially with Missouri's non-con slate. We'll take a look at the SEC on New Year's Day, but here's the path to 10-8 in the league for me:

Wins: Home vs Tennessee, Texas A&M, Georgia, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Alabama

Away vs South Carolina, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt

Losses: Home vs Florida and Auburn

Away vs Kentucky, Mississippi State, Alabama, LSU, Arkansas, Ole Miss

Honestly, that doesn't look hard to me. It's 7-2 at home with two top 50 wins. It's 3-6 on the road with the best win being at No. 89 South Carolina.That would put Mizzou 19-12 entering the SEC Tournament. With a win in the tourney opener, you're looking at 20-13. It's probably not lock category. Lock means you'd need one or two more. But it would give you a pretty good chance. To me, it still looks not only realistic, but it looks like something that should happen if this program is close to where we thought it was entering the season.

3) Old dogs rarely learn new tricks. Cuonzo Martin talked a lot about offense and scoring and playing faster. And his team is 20th in defensive efficiency, 116th in offensive efficiency and 271st in adjusted tempo. In other words, it's a completely Cuonzo Martin team.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS WEEK'S TEN THOUGHTS

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