Mizzou Links, 5-22-08

Mizzou Baseball 3, Texas 2.  The Big 12 Tournament kicked off with the two hottest teams in the conference (other than maybe OSU) going to extra innings, with Trevor Coleman driving home the winning run in the bottom of the 10th.  Rick Zagone put together a solid 7 innings, and one-man bullpen Kyle Gibson took it from there.  The Trib, Missourian, Post-Dispatch, and PowerMizzou have more.

In Game 2 of the tournament, 8-seed Oklahoma upset 1-seed, 4-1, the perfect result to offset Mizzou's win.  Here are the Day #2 scenarios for Mizzou's pool, as I posted yesterday in the Live Thread.

If MU and UT win today...

MU 2-0
OU 1-1
UT 1-1
ATM 0-2

Mizzou advances.

If MU and ATM win today...

MU 2-0
OU 1-1
ATM 1-1
UT 0-2

If MU beats ATM, they advance.  If ATM beats MU, there's no way MU can advance--the winner would then be either ATM (if UT beats OU) or OU (if they beat UT).

If OU and UT win today...

OU 2-0
MU 1-1
UT 1-1
ATM 0-2

MU can still advance if they beat ATM and UT beats OU (in a three-way tie, the top seed advances).

If OU and ATM win today...

OU 2-0
MU 1-1
ATM 1-1
UT 0-2

OU advances no matter what.

UT and ATM play first today (4pm), so Mizzou will know what it's playing for heading into its 7:30 contest.  The ideal scenario is Texas beating ATM, but either way Tim Jamieson has an interesting decision to make tonight.  Do you start Aaron Crow or Ian Berger?  I understand the logic for saving Crow for ATM on Saturday (even though Berger got smoked by the Sooners during the regular season), but at the same time, beating OU is equally important, and if Crow can go 7-9 innings tonight, you could make sure Gibson has enough in the tank to put in some good innings against ATM.  I dunno...I could go either way here...as long as we win tonight, I'm cool.  And yes, I realize if we win with Berger tonight (and UT beats ATM), then we could actually save Crow for the championship game, which would be fantastic.

In Pool #2 in the tourney, we had two upsets.  #6 Baylor beat #3 Nebraska, 10-4, and #7 Kansas State beat #2 Oklahoma State, 3-2.  Yup.  PERFECT day for Mizzou.

The Missourian has a nice article on Ben Askren's upcoming trip to the Olympic Trials in Vegas, and he's just as confident as he's ever been.  "I am the favorite. There is no two ways about it."

Finally, congrats to Dr. Rick McGuire for winning this year's Don Faurot Sportsperson of the Year award.  Granted, it's too late to help him in the Mizzou 25 competition, but I think he'll live.  Some nice quotes here:

Faurot popped in on McGuire in one of his first days on the job.

"He proceeds to share with me how important it was that a coach at the University of Missouri understood that you could win with great Missouri boys," McGuire said. "He was strong on that. He meant, ‘It isn’t that we win, it’s that we win with Missouri boys.’

"After about 15 minutes, I had to explain to him that at that particular moment I only coached Missouri women. He said, ‘That doesn’t matter. They need to be from Missouri. But if you can have any influence, we need to win with Missouri boys, too.’"