Mizzou Links, 5-28-09

by Bill C. on May 28, 2009 5:39 AM CDT in News

How in the hell is it already the end of May...

The Women's College World Series begins today! Hooray! Links!

Mutigers.com: Tigers Begin World Series Run on Thursday
TheSunDevils.com: No. 10 Softball Ready to Dance with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight at Fourth Consecutive WCWS
ESPN.com: Breaking down the WCWS Teams
Keep your program handy. Only Arizona went to its bullpen with more regularity than Missouri, and that was more out of necessity than anything for a Wildcats team with a 2.80 ERA. By contrast, the Tigers entered super regionals ranked fifth in the nation in team ERA and now have 34 relief appearances in 60 games. Missouri isn't a complete unknown in this year's field -- it didn't play any of its World Series competition in the regular season but faced Arizona, Arizona State, Washington and Alabama last season. (And Michigan is certainly familiar with former Wolverine Stacy Delaney.) But coach Ehren Earleywine's propensity for changing up looks in the circle could leave foes slow to adjust.
The Trib: MU hoping trip to OKC becomes annual event
The Missourian: Missouri softball team trying to keep loose for World Series
KC Star: MU softball pitcher Delaney ready if she gets the call

To baseball, where Mizzou says stats don't matter!!!

The Tigers finished last in hitting in Big 12 Conference games, finished fifth in pitching, finished sixth in team fielding and often used its bullpen to pitch an entire game.

Only two hitters finished with a batting average over .300 and only outfielder Greg Folgia hit more than six home runs.

...

"You should see where we finished in the timely hitting department,” said outfielder Greg Folgia, who leads the team in batting average, RBIs and home runs.

That pierces me deep, Folgia. Bottom line is, a good portion of Mizzou's offense was terrible the first half of the season, but if you just look at numbers from the last month or half of the season, I'm pretty sure they'd look damn good...in both the "timely hitting department" and the, uhh, untimely hitting department.

The Post-Dispatch's Vahe Gregorian, who certainly knows his way around Mizzou AD stories, takes a look at Mike Alden and the challenge to which he's risen.

Mike Anderson: USA Basketball assistant.

AFCA: wusses.

It's no Meme Madness, but PowerMizzou appears to have found its offseason time-killer: All-Time Great polls! First up: Mizzou's all-time great QB.

Finally...ignore the typos, and Phil Steele's got an interesting blurb about returning % of tackles in his "blog"...yet another number that doesn't bode well for Mizzou...and seriously, Florida returns 98.9% of its tackles from 2008...good god...

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More on the silly AFCA decision...

…from the inestimable Senator Blutarsky at Get the Picture:

There is an interesting part to the press release, though. It involves two recommendations that the folks at Gallup made that aren’t being implemented, naturally.

• Reduce to 10 or 15 the number of teams ranked.

• Evaluate with other shareholders in college football the value of a preseason poll.

I find those to be excellent suggestions that would improve the quality of the poll. As we’ve learned here with the Mumme Poll voting, it’s much easier to evaluate 10-15 schools than it is 25 – and we’re not coaches who likely don’t have the time to spend evaluating that many programs every week. And preseason polls are at best worthless and at worst a contributor to stacking the deck against schools who start out ranked lower than they should, based on their play.

Rock M Nation
Thrust nunchuk upward!

by Bill C. on May 28, 2009 7:58 AM CDT reply actions