Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning

Many of you are not going to want to read all of this. I don't think that's the best way to tease a story, but I'm just being up front with you. There's going to be a lot of Chiefs stuff and Super Bowl stuff in here and some of you don't care about that but you can't please everybody all the time so hopefully some will enjoy it. Before that, though, you guys are here for the Mizzou stuff so let's do some of that.

1) Missouri won a basketball game on Saturday and that's a good thing. The Tigers were the more active, energetic team on Saturday. That's mainly good because I openly wondered in the midst of the dreadful loss to Texas A&M if Cuonzo Martin was losing (or had lost) the team. They just looked uninspired in the two games prior to beating Arkansas. But they came out with energy from the tip and beat a decent (I don't think Arkansas is an NCAA Tournament team, but it's not bad) team despite not having two pretty important players available. Whatever the problems are, the effort is still there. And while that's not everything, it is an important thing. I've been pretty clear to that to me this season has been over for a couple weeks now. Whatever happens, they're not really playing for anything meaningful. But for the program, the next four weeks are still important. This roster is almost entirely back next season. The players are largely the same. So it is important that they do some decent things down the stretch and carry a little momentum and good feelings into the offseason. Saturday wasn't a season changer or anything, but it was a good sign.

2) A big reason Saturday was important was because of what lies ahead this week. Mizzou takes off for a road game at LSU tomorrow night. The Tigers have lost two in a row, but they've scored 90 points in both of them and one was in overtime and LSU is still tied for the conference lead. Over the last two seasons, LSU is 24-5 in league play (we can debate how many of those wins are eventually going to count, but we can't deny that they've happened and count as of today). Up next is Auburn, which beat LSU on Saturday, has won six in a row, has scored at least 75 in all six of those and is currently tied for the SEC lead. So you kind of have to expect an 0-2 week, which is going to leave Mizzou 11-14 and will put Cuonzo Martin at 46-44 in his tenure at Mizzou. So, again, while Saturday didn't change a lot for the season, it was at least a brief interlude of good news.

3) Let's look around the SEC for just a minute. I think this is probably a five-bid conference.

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