Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning

1) Missouri opens SEC Tournament play on Thursday. The Tigers' path (if form holds) would be Texas A&M (7), Auburn (2), LSU (3), Kentucky (1). So, yeah, don't love the chances. The Aggies beat the Tigers twice. You'd like to think Missouri is a better team, but over the course of the year it wasn't. Buzz Williams should be the SEC coach of the year in my opinion. They were generally picked 12th to 14th and finished 7th. He did a hell of a job. If Mizzou manages to get by the Aggies, it faces Auburn, which it did beat, but did so without Auburn's best player and the other Tigers will be rested. If somehow Missouri won that game, it would mark the first time it has ever reached Saturday in the SEC Tournament. I'm going to be shocked if it happens.

2) So what's that mean? Well, Missouri enters the tournament 15-16. To have any chance at the NIT whatsoever, Mizzou is going to have to beat A&M and Auburn. Then a loss Saturday would leave them .500 and technically give them a shot...but they shot wouldn't be all that good. If they manage to win Saturday, they'd be playing for a spot in the tournament that matters on Sunday with an NIT spot much more likely if they were to lose the title game. But now we're talking crazy talk to be honest. Nothing this team has done makes you think it can put together three straight games good enough to pull three straight upsets and reach the conference championship game. So by the time we write this again, Mizzou's season is almost certainly over. It is, at best, a lateral move from last season, when Missouri finished 15-17. Parts of this season were better, parts were more disappointing, but the end result is more or less identical.

3) The focus will quickly shift to who comes back.

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