We Can Be Heroes

This isn't going to be my normal fare.  I'm not going to wax poetic or eloquent, and I'm not going to go back and edit and shape this into a museum piece.  I'm just going to pour it onto the page, because that's what these Missouri Tigers make me want to do.  In the words of classic garage rockers The Hombres, Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out).

Which, in turn, leads to the words of the far more sophisticated David Bowie.  We Can Be Heroes.

As I watch the highlights again today, I'm struck by how many of the current Tigers have authored an iconic moment this season, a game or play for the ages.  DeMarre Carroll, like Doug Smith or Steve Stipanovich before him, is for all time, the kind of player best remembered for a body of work.  But many of his teammates, like a handful of Tigers through history, simply freeze time.

If I say Mark Dressler, you say Notre Dame, 1980.  If I say Lee Coward, you say Jayhawk Assassin.  If I say Corey Tate, you say The Shot, Circa '97.

And now, if I say Zaire Taylor, you say Texas and Kansas.  If I say Kimmie! you say 15 points in 6 minutes.  If I say Leo, you say The Shot That Beat Marquette.  If I say Marcus Denmon, you say The Shot Heard 'Round the World.

And if I say J.T. (pardon me, Jesus Tyrannosaurus) Tiller, you conjure up an image of a basketball Atlas, with shoulders big and broad enough to carry a program's impossible hopes past an immovable object.  If I say 2009, you say The Team That Would Not Die, The Season That Would Not End.

In The Wild One, when bad boy Johnny Strabler is asked what he's rebelling against, he replies "What you got?"  In twenty years, when someone asks me who was the hero of Mizzou's 2008-09 season, I'll just say, Brando-style, "Who you got?"