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USA Mortgage presents What Just Happened? Vol. 104

Click here to hook up with former Mizzou Tiger Brandon Barnes for all your mortgage needs
Click here to hook up with former Mizzou Tiger Brandon Barnes for all your mortgage needs

Hailing from Sikeston, Missouri, former Mizzou football player Brandon Barnes is your home loan coach with USA Mortgage. Whether it’s purchasing your dream home or refinancing for a better rate, he’s got you covered. Click on the image above or right here to get the process started.

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I laughed it off when the AARP membership letters started arriving. But when I checked the mail Wednesday evening and found a flyer for the Lenoir Woods assisted living facility, that was a low blow. I mean, the flyer assured me that my independence would be balanced with the additional care and help I might need, which I would certainly appreciate, but I do have a little time left before my falling-in-the-shower years begin.

I felt better a few hours later when Dru Smith struck a blow for modern maturity. Smith had already pulled off two-thirds of the wily veteran hat trick before he even began his drive to the basket in the final seconds against Florida.

After a steal in the first half, Smith broke away from the pack and opted for a sensible layup off the glass — as basketball shots go, it is the Dockers khaki — extending his impressive two-year streak of not dunking at Missouri.

Inbounding the ball under Florida’s basket in the second half, Smith shrewdly noticed the Gators’ Colin Castleton had turned his back. Smith gently bounced the ball off Castleton’s spine, stepped inbounds and laid the ball in the basket. It’s a play favored by liniment-scented men wearing multiple orthopedic braces.


On the last possession, Smith got a step on Tre Mann on a drive along the right baseline. Had he gone to the rim through the front door, a fast-closing Castleton would have swatted the shot, and Missouri almost surely would have lost the game in overtime. But of course Smith sensed this possibility in the way an old-timer is on high alert when he hands a confused teenager at the Chick-fil-A register $10.02 for an order costing $9.52. (If you think he’s walking out of that place with a bunch of trash coins when he could unload two pennies and get two quarters back, you’re crazy.) Smith went backdoor, using the rim as protection from Castleton and releasing his shot just before the hard-charging Anthony Duroji could get to it.

Game over … at the sensible hour of 7:30 p.m. Take that, whippersnappers.


This is March

The greatest 68-degree day is the 68-degree March day. The bugs have yet to emerge, the grass doesn’t need mowed, the unpleasantness of the last three months makes the feeling of room temperature outside of a room feel exotic.

The most decadent thing you can do on a 68-degree March day is sit inside and watch one basketball game after another, which is why it feels so delicious to do exactly that on the first day of the NCAA Tournament. Of course, it’s also pretty great to spend all day inside watching one basketball game after another on a 32-degree March day. By Day 2, sometimes your bracket has soured you on the experience and it seems like Capital One could have put a little more thought into its commercials, but Day 1 is nothing but possibilities, baby.

Who didn’t get their first taste of socially acceptable gambling from an NCAA Tournament pool? Who didn’t have that one cool teacher in high school who misused the school’s audio-visual equipment to tune in to March Madness and let you watch?

The biggest upshot of Missouri’s win at Florida was it removed any lingering doubt that the Tigers would slide out of the NCAA Tournament. It now seems safe to say that for only the second time in the last eight seasons, Missouri will make the tournament.

Before the season, this was the benchmark I set for a successful year. So in the spirit of warmth, I pause and acknowledge a job well done.

Horn of plenty

There are hard ways to win football games. The easy way is to have the best quarterback on your team.

In my opinion, the greatest Mizzou player of the last 25 years was defensive lineman Justin Smith, who deserves to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He went 8-4 as a freshman with Corby Jones as his quarterback and 7-15 as a sophomore and junior with Kirk Farmer/Jimmie Dougherty/Darius Outlaw/Justin Gage as his QB. In case you’re wondering, Smith didn’t get worse between the ages of 19 and 21.

If you analyze the last quarter-century of Mizzou football, there’s a direct correlation: Good quarterback equals a good year; bad quarterback equals a bad year and often equals the end of a coach’s tenure.

Larry Smith: not good … Corby Jones! … not good … fired.

Gary Pinkel: not good … Brad Smith! … Chase Daniel! … Blaine Gabbert! … James Franklin! … Maty Mauk? … not good … retired.

Barry Odom: Drew Lock! … not good … fired.

Which brings us to Eli Drinkwitz, who inherited and developed a quarterback, Connor Bazelak, who went 5-3 as a starter against SEC competition. That was unexpected and extremely important, but equally important is that Drinkwitz added to his stash with Tyler Macon, a four-star recruit who enrolled at the semester, and he just got a commitment from another four-star recruit, Sam Horn.

More so than anything Missouri showed on the field last season, this recruiting success shows Drinkwitz actually has something cooking here. One big-time quarterback recruit might not pan out. But when you start stacking them, the math is in your favor. And when you get a commitment like Horn, from half a country away, with no connection to your school, committing despite the reigning SEC offensive freshman of the year playing his position — that’s not coincidence. You earn a Sam Horn commitment if you’re coaching at Missouri.

The talent of the starting quarterback sets the ceiling for a team, the depth at the quarterback position sets the floor and all the other positions determine what a team achieves within that range. The floor is rising at Missouri.

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