What Just Happened? Vol. 30
There is a sweet spot for a Missouri basketball coach, before we take for granted what he does well and fixate on what he does not, before his pet phrases grate on our nerves, before winning 20 games and making the NCAA Tournament is the least he can do.
Cuonzo Martin is in that sweet spot now.
Heading into their tournament opener against Florida State, Martin and his team are unburdened by expectations. That is why, as the NCAA Tournament selection show unfolded on Sunday inside Mizzou Arena, I sensed the one thing almost everyone was rooting for — Missouri landing in Wichita in the same bracket as Kansas — was the worst possible scenario for the Tigers. I say “almost everyone” because, as we soon learned, Kevin Puryear feels only slightly warmer about Wichita than Quantrill felt about Lawrence.
Had the Tigers and Jayhawks wound up in the same location, there would have been nonstop chatter about a second-round matchup, virtually guaranteeing a Missouri loss in the first round in an arena filled with gleeful Kansans.
As it is, the Tigers are in Nashville. Who doesn’t love Nashville, except maybe some bitter singer/songwriters who can’t catch a break or sissies whose stomachs can’t tolerate fried chicken slathered in its own grease/cayenne pepper mixture at 2 a.m.? And Missouri drew an opponent whose coach, Leonard Hamilton, described its identity to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as “inconsistent, unfortunately.”
All is not wonderful for Missouri, as it will face the Seminoles without Jordan Barnett after his DWI arrest Saturday morning, but in terms of opponent and location, the eighth-seeded Tigers did well.
Whether Missouri wins or loses against Florida State, it’s been a terrific year that resets the program to the level where it belongs. Whatever happens in the tournament is gravy, or, since we’re talking about Nashville, cayenne pepper-infused grease.
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On Monday night, the Missouri women’s basketball team, which last played a very long time ago, learned its NCAA Tournament fate. MU received a No. 5 seed and was shipped to Palo Alto, Calif. The Tigers will face Florida Gulf Coast in the first round on Saturday. If they advance, they will meet the winner of Stanford vs. Gonzaga.
There are two criteria separating a good draw from a bad draw in the women’s tournament. One is the No. 4 vs. 5 seed line — it’s the difference between hosting the first two rounds and travelling. The other is being placed in a different bracket than Connecticut. So Missouri went 1 for 2.
The Tigers were in good shape to host until struggling in losses to Texas A&M and Georgia. So they went from a potentially record-setting home crowd at Mizzou Arena to a foreign arena halfway across the country. On the men’s side, there is virtually no difference between a No. 4 or 5 seed, but for the women, it is a gaping, yawning, cavernous chasm. That’s the way it goes.
If it makes the Tigers feel any better, their old friends from South Carolina earned a No. 2 seed but landed in the same bracket as UConn. Just another example of the vast conspiracy against South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, who told reporters, “It just seems like time and time again, we always get the short end of the stick.”
As of Thursday evening, Staley had not filed suit against the selection committee.
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Karissa Schweizer is not only the nation’s female track athlete of the year — an honor she earned from the coaches’ association after winning the 3,000 and 5,000 meters at last weekend’s NCAA Indoor Championships — she is also the nation’s ninth-best women’s track team.
Schweizer piled up 20 points at the NCAA meet, and even though no other Missouri woman competed, the Tigers placed ninth.
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The good news for the Missouri baseball team is it’s ranked 24th in the latest Collegiate Baseball poll. The bad news is eight Southeastern Conference teams are ranked ahead of the Tigers.
Missouri has won nine straight and is 14-3 after beating 20th-ranked Wichita State 9-4 on Tuesday. The SEC grind begins this weekend at 16th-ranked LSU.
I will be interested to see how Steve Bieser ultimately arranges his pitching staff. Most of last year and so far this season, Bieser has used his best pitcher, lefty T.J. Sikkema, in relief — often long relief — in close games. The idea is put the best guy in the most high-leverage situations, regardless of when they occur in the game. That way he isn’t wasted as a starter in games when the offense doesn’t give the team a chance to win or when the offense is so prolific that any old pitcher would do. The drawback is that if none of the weekend’s games are close, the best pitcher is a nonfactor.
Sikkema has a 0.87 ERA and 14 strikeouts in 10.1 innings, so getting the most effective use out of him is imperative as the competition ramps up.
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Former Missouri softball coach Ehren Earleywine’s unemployment ended this week when he was hired as the athletic director of Jefferson City Public Schools. Earleywine’s happiness at MU was inversely proportional to the amount of time he spent in the company of an athletic administrator, so it was a bit of a surprise to see him accept a desk job.
He is a Jefferson City native and said he wanted to stay close to his kids in Mid-Missouri, so the new gig makes sense on that level.
I don’t know if Earleywine can elevate Jefferson City, which will soon have two public high schools, back to the athletic glory days of the Pete Adkins era, but I would definitely buy a ticket to watch his annual performance reviews with coaches.