9/18/2023 football Edit

Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning presented by Will Gar...

Gabe DeArmond • PowerMizzou

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Gabe has covered the Tigers for PowerMizzou.com since August of 2003 and been the site's publisher since 2006.

1) Saturday was one of Eli Drinkwitz's two biggest wins at Missouri. I'm not sure whether I'd rank it 1 or 2. Kansas State was the highest-ranked team Drinkwitz has beaten. South Carolina was 25 last year and LSU was 17 in 2020. It was just the seventh win over a top 15 team Missouri has had since joining the SEC. Against ranked teams overall since joining the league, Mizzou is now 10-30. The argument for the LSU game is that LSU is a brand name, was defending national champs and gave Drinkwitz instant credibility. If he can do this in his first year with this roster, what can he do down the road? The argument for Saturday is that a lot of the momentum had stalled and a lot of people had started to turn a little sour on everything. The win changed that. Momentum is back with Mizzou and that's a big deal. Plus, like it or not, Kansas State is viewed as a rival far more than LSU is by most of the people who were in that stadium.

2) It's never as bad as we think (last week) or as good as we think (today). I spoke to a source with the team yesterday and we were talking about the SEC and in particular the East. Well, I was. The person I talked to didn't want any of that yet. "It doesn't mean anything if we don't win next week." I said that if they can win the next two (they'll be favored in both), Faurot should be nuts for LSU coming back to town on October 7th. "Forget about 5-0, we need to be 4-0." It's not hard to get a team up for a huge game like Saturday. It's often a lot harder to bring them back down to earth after a win like that and then get them back up for a game they're expected to win. Memphis isn't a pushover, but Missouri is about a touchdown favorite in early lines I've seen. They got this game in their own state. They should win. Sometimes it's tough to convince players that they'll have to play every bit as hard and as well against a team like Memphis as they did against Kansas State.

3) The game wasn't perfect. It could have been a bigger win for Missouri.

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