Rock M Roundtable!

1 - Mizzou's next four games are @OSU, Tech, @Texas, Kansas. What will their record be in these games?

2 - Former UMKC coach Rich Zvosec made some noise yesterday when he told 610 a.m. that losing Laurence Bowers was "addition by subtraction" for this Missouri team. Is he right?

3 - How should Dorial Green-Beckham announce his college of choice next week? Pick from five hats? Pick from five baby animals -- baby tiger, baby pig, baby calf, baby elephant or baby, uh, horse, I guess (for the Sooner schooner)? Telegram? Incorporate Lambert's Throwed Rolls in some way?

4 - So who's YOUR most annoying recurring SNL character of all-time?

RPT: 1. 3-1, just because I think Mizzou is well overdue for a "Why won't the ball just fall in the damn hole?" night pretty soon. I think MU splits the UT/KU set, though I won't commit to saying which is which.

2. Yes, if only because necessity was the mother of invention for Haith. Having Bowers would make Missouri a deeper and more talented team, but who knows what Bowers' availability would have done for the style of basketball played by the team this season.

3. Taking off a sweatshirt to reveal a Flat Branch shirt would be a nice start. Then he'd buy us all growlers and join the Rock M Roundtable one week per month.

4. Gilly, no questions asked. Worst television character in American history.

Doug: 1 - I think 3-1 and 2-2 are both realistic. And, the best chance for losses come in the second half of that schedule.

2 - It wasn't talked about as much with KU in 2008, but when Julian Wright departed in 2007 for the NBA, it really solidified Kansas as a 3-big and 4-guard rotation through out most of the year. Now, I think Bowers would make Missouri better, but I certainly would not have expected to see Ratliffe be so productive on the inside as the only post presence for the Tigers.

3 - An intricate sombrero dance.

4 - I always thought Opera Man was a bit one note for me (ha!). But, honestly, I thought Pat, while at times funny, was most just bizarre than anything else.

The Beef: 1 - I will also go with 3-1, though I was aiming for 3-1 in our last 4, and we beat me, so let’s try that again

2 - I will also also agree with RPT on this one (and this is why I try to be the first to answer these questions…as I really don’t have many original thoughts). If Bowers is in there, I don’t believe RR is the player we see today. MP is not the player we see today. I am not entirely sold Phlip develops quite the same, since the game might be a hair slower and focused more on simple passes to the interior rather than as many of the pick/rolls we see. We really wont know obviously, and we cannot really be THAT much better at this point (At least as it pertains to record), but I don’t think it is nearly as ridiculous as many who chose to get angry about it yesterday (proving Mizzou fans will get angry at anything in the absence of actually maddening things)

3 - I had never seen the clip of the kid announcing last year with the baby bulldog…horrifying and funny all at the same time

4 - Joe Piscopo?

Michael Atchison: I’ll note for the record that Bill’s email kicking this thing off arrived at 5:32 am CST.

1. I think they can win all four. I’ll go with three. Like Ross, I won’t pick the loss.

2. I wouldn’t term it "addition by subtraction," but I have thought about this very thing. Ask yourself this: Would this team have been any better to this point with Bowers? It’s hard to imagine that they would. They’re 18-1, ranked second in the nation. They’re 9-1 against power conference opponents and only three of those games have been at home. They humiliated the first place team in the Pac-12 and the team that just beat Syracuse (and that team had its best player against Missouri and then promptly lost him for the rest of the season). Let’s just say this: In Laurence’s absence, they’ve been resourceful. It has opened up the floor, giving Ratliffe more room to operate inside. The team has handled and moved the ball better with English moving from the three spot to the four. When that happened, ballhandling improved at both spots. The ability to collapse a defense with the drive and then kick it out to any of four shooters has made them very hard to defend and to prepare for. An analyst on one of the recent games said it’s like preparing for the flexbone. When you only see it once a year, it’s hard to defend.

All that said, if Bowers could magically heal and be available for the rest of the season, would I take it? Yes, in a heartbeat. This team could use the depth, skill, heart and size. But I would hope that the four-guard set would still be a major part of the plan.

3. A tweet that says "I have decided to attend the University of Missouri" would suffice.

4. I think I’ve only seen Gilly once, so I’ve been spared that pain (though I think Kristin Wiig is spectacular). I was never much of a fan of the cheerleaders. I’ll go with them.

ZouDave: 1 – Well it needs to be better than 2-2, that’s for sure. We can’t have a slip up in either of the next 2 games. After that, boy…that week really is going to put us on our path for the rest of the season. Win both of those games, we’re the frontrunner for the conference and potentially the #1 team in the nation. Lose them both, we will have been "exposed" and we’re an also-ran in the conference race.

So screw it, we’re going 4-0. Neither @Texas nor home against kansas are going to be in ANY WAY easy but we’re getting it done!

2 – I think it might be a case of the team not being better off without Bowers, but the loss of Bowers made others step up their game to the point that we’re seeing more out of other guys than we ever would have seen otherwise. If Bowers were here, who knows what kind of player Ratliffe is this year. If Bowers were here, Kimmie isn’t under the goal as much taking charges every single game. If Bowers were here, STEEEEEEEVE wouldn’t be nearly as important a player. But it would be foolish to say we couldn’t use a guy as talented as Laurence Bowers. We’ve seen what he can do, and we know it’s good. Flip would probably have 1-2 more assists per game with the party-starter out there. So I don’t think it’s addition by subtraction, but I think it can be a case of blessing in disguise maybe. It’s like in Apollo 13 when Lt. Dan gets diagnosed with the measles and can’t go up in space, but then he ends up being back at NASA to help figure out how to get everyone home. Then for some reason he kidnaps Braveheart’s son and holds him for ransom. Weird movie.

3 – I think he should just have a small press conference, thank all of the teams and coaches for everything throughout the past couple of years, tell everyone there’s not one other thing anybody could have done. Then, after a long pause, yell out "M I Z!!!!!!!" and walk off.

4 – I stopped watching SNL in about 1995. Just about everything I’ve seen of SNL in the past 15 or so years has been exceptionally annoying. The Will Ferrel and what’s-her-name cheerleaders were terrible, Goat Boy was terrible, that one girl in the Catholic school outfit that kept smelling her hands and falling into things was terrible, etc. I can’t believe Church Lady was first on that list. Church Lady was awesome. I’m going to go with Goat Boy. That always made me want to punch a hole in a wall, and I bet I only saw it 3 or 4 times.

(90 minutes later…)

SleepyFloyd7: 1 - HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW??? Every single time I try to set a limitation on what this team can do, they shove it in my face. I believe that a game like @ Texas or Kansas can pose some of the problems that were unearthed in the game at K-State. But so did the Baylor game, and Mizzou managed to answer those particular riddles. I am most worried about the Texas game - quick turnaround from Saturday to Monday. I'll go 3-1.

2 - If Bowers were on this team, it would create a Basketball Singularity - marking the emergence of greater-than-human basketball entity, very probably resulting in explosive super-basketball. Since the capabilities of such basketball would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a Basketball Singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. Perhaps Rich Zvosec was sent from the future to insure that this eventuality never comes to pass. Perhaps humanity owes him a debt of eternal gratitude.

3 - A quiet, and private phone call to Gary Pinkel's office would suffice. That, of course, would cause the message boards to es-plode.

4 - I enjoy SNL, and have since I was about 12. I take it for what it is - a weekly attempt to make people laugh. It's not that easy. Do they miss more often than they hit? Probably, but I appreciate the effort.

BTW, the Herb Welch bit in Emma Stone's episode last fall left me crying. Kristin Wiig takes 30 microphone hits to her naughty bits without breaking. It is a Herculean display of comic ability.

The Beef: I watched that again this past weekend, and it held up. Hader has really grown on me (the Stephan and Diabeetus reference from late last year still make me laugh), and I also appreciate when people do occasionally break up while performing. He barely held it together, and she barely cracked a smile, though I think if you watch her eyes, she certainly did "acknowledge" what was going on.

Michael Atchison: Jerry Palm has Mizzou as the number one seed in the Midwest, playing in Omaha and then St. Louis. I’m not sure my heart can take this.

(CBS is also calling "Bracketology"; Lunardi must not have registered his trademark)

The Beef: Hotel The Beef/TGQ will be open to all who need a place to sleep should that happen

/notreally,butnicetomaketheoffer

ZouDave: I’M MOVING IN!

Doug: I'm curious which schools will wind up in the Albuquerque pod to play in the Pit. I think UNLV is one of the potential teams playing well enough for a favorable 3 or 4 seed, but there just aren't a lot of schools near here. I think we're going to wind up with a pretty quiet first couple of rounds in New Mexico.

The Beef: Someone from the Pac-12?

/laughedwhiletypingthat

ZouDave: BEEF and Bill C. will road trip to ABQ, just because.

The Beef: Not sure we can fit that many baby seats in the back of the funk truck…especially if we stuff poor Granger (friend of Bill C.) back there again so we can crash with his folks

ZouDave: I would trade at least half of my Godzilla-video karma for a copy of that Trip Diary. Was that the fabled "Mr. Big" happening?

The Beef: No…that was the Bowling Green-"don’t sh!t on the grass" trip I think. I thought on the trip to ABQ we found old candy from a roadtrip gone by…but I could be making that up

Doug: You can find a lot of old stuff in Albuquerque. Not much of which you would want to eat, either.

ZouDave: Was that also the one where you got stuck in traffic and heard some crazy story on some random talk-radio segment?

I could be making all of this up, or merging all of them together, but something funny happened at some point and I REMEMBER IT (KIND OF)!

The Beef: Correct…leaving ABQ a tanker truck had overturned and we were routed off the highway. This was in the days before GPS, so we were just on some back road driving on faith that at some point while we were heading south that we could turn and head back east and north and run back into the highway.

And yes, later that evening was the greatest night of AM radio ever, as we had broadcasts from LA to San Antonio to points further MUCH further east.

The Beef: Do we need to send out a search party for ghtd or is this just his busy time of year? D-Sing? Bill C?

JIMMINY CHRISTMAS WHO THE HELL IS ACTUALLY HERE?!?!?

ZouDave: ght might have gone full "wedding registry overload". He was promised the use of a scan gun if he behaved…maybe he didn’t behave?

Doug: Man, using the scan gun is the only reason to tag along during wedding gift registry.

The Beef: I just know that the wedding was almost off when I got my hands on the scanner….though I did manage to register for an enormous bouncy ball from Target…I was hoping the color specificity of "blue" would come through on the registry..but sadly it did not, and even sadlierly, I did not get the gift.

ZouDave: Pretty much. And even then…

The Beef: Should we now have a contest of … "Things BillSelf’sToupee scanned on his registry when his Jayhawk wife was not looking"

ZouDave: Dignity.

SleepyFloyd7: Regardless of what you register for, every wedding couple shall receive 8 coffee makers.

ghtd36: Obviously, I know this is the whole "stock up on crap for the rest of your life" phase, but wow, there is just nothing at Pottery Barn that even remotely moved the needle for me last night.

Michael Atchison: Did everyone see Greg’s engagement photo? Are we going on the assumption that his fiancée lost a bet?

The Beef: Was he dressed up as Super Mexican Greg? Because then I would say that he WON a bet

ZouDave: I have to say we received 0 coffee makers when I married the WEW. We registered for 0 and got 0…neither of us drank coffee.

The Beef: Just wait until your wife is looking at kid furniture…I damn near passed out last night when she told me the entire cost we were looking at

ghtd36: It's a longstanding truism that I totally outkicked my coverage, but let's be honest here: who among the RMN Illuminati really didn't outkick their respective coverages? I think of it more of continuing a longstanding RMN tradition.

ZouDave: I may have outkicked the coverage, but there was a penalty flag thrown during the return for too many men on the field.

BOOM!

SleepyFloyd7:

What is your Blues Name?

Blind Boy Franklin here.

The Beef: Blind Fingers Jefferson

ghtdt36: Ugly Foot Jefferson, ready to jam.

RPT: I'd prefer not to go on the record with my initials.

Doug: Old Sugar Dupree

I think my blues name is giving me the blues.

Bill C.: SCREAMIN' LEGS HOPKINS.

Michael Atchison: Jailhouse Sugar Jackson.

ZouDave: Old Sleep Sticky

The Beef: No no Dave…not what you are doing right now…you use your initial and then you apply them to that chart

ZouDave: Ooooh…OOOOOOHHH, I get it now.

Doug: That sounds like a health class lesson from high school.

ZouDave: And crap, I did it wrong anyway. My God I’m stupid. I used the first chart for the whole thing.

The Beef: Now THAT is funny

ZouDave: Old Back Hopkins.

I like the first one better.

Doug: As did we all.

ZouDave: Eh, the fact that I owned up to it can be used as karma for tonight.

The Beef: It has been a little slow at times, but I feel good about the effort put forth here as it should translate to tonight

Michael Atchison: This was such a simple exercise that it pains me to point out that Tepper got his last name wrong. Franklin, not Jefferson.

The Beef: Wow…we really stink at this

ZouDave:

Michael Atchison: While watching that, I saw this:

Someone do this to Travis Ford.

ZouDave: …just because.

SleepyFloyd7: Quick, Bill! Post this before we have another extended lull!