Mizzou Links, 1-14-09

A new team emerges tonight at Mizzou Arena against Colorado: a team without Leo Lyons (for one game) and possibly without Chris Paul's cousin (forever and ever), but with some dude named Miguel Paul who's not related to anybody important.  Should be fun.  Here's the mutigers.com official release.

> A huge key for Missouri will be the play of its bench... Missouri's "kamikaze line" is averaging 30.8 points a game this season and has outscored the entire teams of Arkansas-Pine Bluff (50-41), Stetson (45-44) and SIU Edwardsville (62-57) ... Those 62 tallies vs. SIUE were a school record ... However in Mizzou's three losses, that second unit is averaging just 11.7 points per game.

> The Tigers rank among the nation's leaders in several statistical categories heading into Wednesday's game ... Mizzou is No. 7 nationally in scoring at 83.2 ppg, No. 3 in assists per game at 19.4, No. 3 in steals per game at 10.9 and No. 2 nationally in assist/turnover ratio at 1.5 ... Another fun stat: Missouri is No. 4 nationally with 64.1 FG attempts per game and the Tigers have already shot 155 more FGs than their opponents through 16 games thanks to their impressive turnover margin (+6.6).

Other CU game links!

• PowerMizzou: Without Lyons, pressure on Tigers
• PowerMizzou: Tigers' leadership comes under question
• KC Star: Missouri tries to learn from Nebraska loss
• Post-Dispatch: Missouri hosts Colorado

And for more pleasant basketball news, we turn to the (no joke) Post-Dispatch, which has a nice story on Zaire Taylor and his journey to Columbia.

Finally, the final Rivals 100 is out, and Sheldon Richardson comes in at #4.  Even though new #1 Bryce Brown almost certainly won't end up at Mizzou, it's definitely pretty cool that they got visits from two of the top four players in the country, plus #48 (Jheranie Boyd) and #58 (Terry Hawthorne).  It's a start.  Unfortunately, Ronnie Wingo's US Army All-American game performance caused him to drop out of the Rivals 100...which is a little odd because a) that's a steep drop, and b) he was asked to play out of position at TE and slot WR, but either way this might confirm with some people the fear that Wingo is a great athlete without a particular position.  I'll still take him, but it's a concern of mine too.