Mizzou Basketball 87, Central Michigan 76. An insane number of offensive fouls in this one. Here's your official recap and box score. DeMar-velous (Inside Mizzou)! Carroll leads Tigers in debut (Trib), MU men's basketball team nets opening win (Missourian), Carroll, Lyons come up big in MU win (KC Star), Tigers get off on right paw (Post-Dispatch...wag of the finger to the writer of this headline).
Cool! Mizzou Soccer will host the first two rounds of the NCAA Regionals this weekend. They will play SEMO Friday at 7pm, while USC and Creighton will play at 4pm. Winners play Sunday at 1pm. The last time Mizzou hosted a tourney game was 1999, the epic OT loss to Marquette at dusk.
Enough stalling...on to football...I'd just as soon not think about football right now and just fast forward to next Saturday, but alas...
Here's the official release for MU-KSU. Lots of firsts for Mizzou recently, but I found this one both particularly exciting and particularly depressing:
A fun fact to ponder is that in the decade of the 2000s, Mizzou has upped its record to 49-44 (.527), and that is the school’s best winning percentage in a decade since the 1960s, when MU enjoyed its most successful era ever.
From 1960-69, the Tigers went 77-22-6 (.762), and were the only school in the nation to never lose more than 3 games in any season during that decade. Under Hall of Fame Coach Dan Devine, the Tigers finished the season ranked in 8 of those 10 years, including 4 in the top-10 (5th in 1960; 6th in 1965; 9th in 1968; 6th in 1969).
Additionally, the 49 wins MU currently has posted this decade (8 seasons), has already surpassed the 10-year win totals for the school in both the 1980s (45) and 1990s (43).
Dave Matter talks about the Big 12's domination of the current BCS standings. It's a shame that only two conference teams can make BCS bowls...and that the second conference bid will probably go to UT. Meanwhile, The Missourian makes the case that KU controls its own championship destiny...and it probably does.
Ron Prince goes a wee bit overboard with his compliments of Dave Christensen and the Mizzou offense. Guess he's taking the Lou Holtz "Our opponents are unbeatable" approach to inspiring his team this week.
This is pretty funny...an exchange about Gary Pinkel's revulsion toward running up the score:
"Man, Chase," Pinkel said. "I feel really bad about even scoring 55."
"Coach," Daniel responded. "We’re running the football (almost) every down. We can’t just take a knee."
Graham Watson screams "TRAP GAME!", and justifiably so...for MU, at least. I just don't see ISU putting a serious scare in KU.
Finally, as always PowerMizzou gets you Like Father, Unlike Son and Media Day quotes...as I've said before, you've gotta love the emotion Pinkel shows in regard to these kids...
That was emotional, those players, what they've done for this school. I'm telling you, seven minutes into the first quarter, I'm trying to get a hold of myself still. It was very emotional. What they've done, we don't know yet. We're going to see how this season finishes. You look at all the things they've done and all the things that are still out there, you know, what they've done to Missouri football, it hasn't been done for a long, long time around here. It will be fun to see how we finish this thing. All those guys, you form relationships with and they're such good kids too. It's tough.