Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning
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1) Missouri kept hope alive on Saturday night with a win over Florida. The hill is still steep. Missouri still has a ways to go before I'm going to legitimately talk about the NCAA Tournament. I think they can lose six games the rest of the way and have a CHANCE to get in. That would be 10-8 in SEC play with a win at West Virginia or 11-7 in SEC play with a loss in Morgantown. It's possible, but not easy by any means. But had Missouri lost, you're now talking about a team that would have had to go 11-4 in its last 15 SEC games (with the first two on the road) and there wouldn't be any reason to believe it was even possible. I'm not ready to say it's likely by any means, but Saturday at least makes it possible.
2) I'm not going to rehash the entire game because we covered it and wrote plenty about what it meant on Saturday night and Sunday morning. But one thing I do think is worth emphasizing again.
Cuonzo Martin: “Part of it, when Jeremiah was here, guys looked for him...You look for him to post and that can make you reserved or passive. Play the game. You have to go out and play the game.”
This wasn't a question about Tilmon. Completely on his own, the coach brought up the fact that Missouri's offense is more free and maybe better without Tilmon on the floor. I don't want to say it's a shot across the bow or a message. I think Martin and Missouri would like to have Tilmon available (from talking to people, I think he'll miss another three weeks at least and I don't think it's impossible at all that we've seen him play his final game in a Mizzou uniform), but I think what that signals is that the coaching staff has reached the same point a lot of us reached at some point this year. And that is the fact that it's time to stop dreaming about what Jeremiah Tilmon might be and accept what he is. He's a solid player who's capable on certain nights of being a great player, but he is not consistent or reliable and he is not a guy you can build a team around. This team will be better if it's spreading the ball and playing free on offense than it will be by trying to force feed a touch to Tilmon on every possession. Even if he returns, the offense should far more resemble what it did against Florida than what it was with him involved.
3) Here's something that surprised me about the game on Saturday