Another pretty full week and weekend of Mizzou sports as classes were back in session. The winter sports keep a pretty good pattern of basketball once during the week and then everything else on the weekend. I think it was a pretty decent week of sports for Mizzou, so let's get to it and see how it turned out. I will also talk a little more about the Hannah situation, but will keep that separate from this.
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Men's Basketball:
Two road games, one road win, you cannot really ask for too much more when it comes to conference season. Wednesday night saw an unimagineably bad defensive effort against TTech. I only say that because I believe you could ask Bobby Knight if his team designed to score over 90 points in a conference game, and after he called you stupid, he would say no. Mizzou continues to allow teams carte blanche inside the three point arc, and our defensive effort in that game was full of reaching and being out of position enough to have to foul....a lot.
I will admit I did not see much of the game against Colorado on Saturday (because The Queen and I were buying a new car). I saw that we were down 11-0, and down 10 at the half. I turned it on just as the team went down by 14...and then went on their finishing run of 30-13 or so. Nice to see the re-emergence of "Good Leo". Bad to see the disappearance of Marshall Brown and Demarre Carroll. At some point, someone has to tell either him or Coach Anderson that he needs to stay around the basket and not shooting 3 pointers.
On the season, Mizzou now stands at 12-8 and 2-3 in conference. This week sees two home games. Mid-week against NU, weekend against k-State. 2-0 gets us back to making next week meaningful. 1-1 probably does not quite do the job. O-2 brings about further pining for football season.
Women's Basketball:
I seem to remember two years ago a highly ranked Baylor team came into Mizzou Arena and walked out with a loss. At least, I am pretty sure it was two years ago. Yes indeed, it was. Well, a highly ranked Baylor team came back to Mizzou Arena, and did not play real well. Unfortunately, neither really did Mizzou, and the Tigers fell by a score of 72-57. Baylor held Mizzou under 35 percent shotting for the evening, and outrebounded the Tigers by 11.
On to this past weekend, where it went from bad to worse for the ladies, this time taking on the Longhorns (or Lady Horns maybe I guess) and falling by 30, 67-37. Stop me if you heard this one before. UT held the Tigers to under 34 percent shooting and outboarded them by 11 points. Alyssa Hollins lead the way for the Tigers with 12 points (on 5-15 shooting). Interestingly, five Mizzou players combined to play 67 minutes (one third of all minutes in the game) and took ONE shot (RaeShara Brown went 1-1). I don't know that I have ever seen anything like that before.
Mizzou now sits at 8-11 and 1-5 in conference. Mizzou will be on the road against aTm to start the week and then comes home to play OU and Courtney Paris this weekend. If you are around, get over to Mizzou Arena and take a look at one of the great players in the country right now.
Wrestling:
Results and thoughts from the dual meet against Cornell from yesterday's Wrestling Wrap-Up.
Gymnastics:
Another strong performance by the Tigers, this time on the road up in Lincoln. In the end, and even with their highest score of the year at 195.350, Mizzou did fall to the Huskers. However, here is a perfect example of how different the ranking system in gymnastics is, as the Tigers stand to move UP in the rankings this coming week.
Mizzou had strong performances from their all-around specialists, as all three eclipsed the 39 point score, with Adrianne Perry scoring a 39.45 for 2nd place. Mizzou also had two scores of 9.900 on the evening, with Perry scoring one on the vault and Sarah Shire scoring the same on the floor exercise. The difference for Mizzou were some missed performances, especially on the bars where the Tigers had to score a routine of 9.025 because they had another that was below that. However, improving your score week to week is what you strive for and Mizzou has done that so far each week this season.
Next weekend, the ladies will host Illinois-Chicago on Friday night. Mizzou routinely avearages in the top tier of attendance of women's gymnastics, so make good on that claim and head to the Hearnes Friday night.
Swimming:
Both the men and the women hosted Iowa this past weekend as their "senior meet" (even though the women still host one final home meet against Nebraska). Both teams, both ranked in the top 20 on the season, ripped Iowa, with the men winning by a score of 183-117 and the women by an equally impressive score of 156-86.
For the women, winning 10 of 13 events spelled certain victory, moving them to 11-1 on the season and 2-1 (still) in conference. Senior Arica Jacinto went out in style with a personal best in the 200 fly, also working with fellow senior Taye Patterson to bring Mizzou home a win in the 200 medley relay. Junior Kendra Melnychuk continues to dominate both diving events, winning both easily.
For the men, winners of 11 of 16 events (dont know why there are more for the men than the women). Travis Ford won his last race at Mizzou in the 200 back. Mizzou got great contributions from swimmers all over the eligibility chain in fact. The men will get a two week break before heading down to Springfield to take on Drury, while the women will join them, but then also swim the next day on the 9th against the Huskers for a big conference battle.
Track:
As we talked about last week, a strange weekend of action for the Mizzou Indoor Track teams, as they travelled (but not all of them) to Lincoln, NE for the Big XII/MWC Meet. Mizzou would win 7 titles on the day (up from 3 last year when they also took part) and helped the Big XII to a pretty decisive win of 224-145. The biggest news on the day for Tigers would be written by Shernelle Nicholls, who not only won the women's shot put, but would throw a personal best, and move up into the top 5 on throws for the season in the country.
Also doing well was Nick Adcock on the men's side, this time in the long jump, where he would improve upon his personal best jump by OVER A FOOT. He would also run his FIFTH race of the season in the 60m hurdles under the old school record (which of course he now holds). Other winners for the Tigers would be Emily Baker in the mile (in come from behind fashion), senior Trisa Nickoley in the 1000 meter race, freshman Kyle Rood in the 1000 meter for the men, junior Chris Rohr in the men's weight throw and junior JaNae Woolridge in the women's long jump.
Next up for the team will be a trip to State College, PA in the Sykes-Sabock Cup at Penn State University. This will be another scored meet, where the Tigers will take on a number of teams from the northeast over the two-day event.
Random Thoughts:
* First weekend since late August/early September with no football....strange.
* From all accounts, it sounds like Martin Rucker had a great week down at the Senior Bowl. Scoring a TD in the game had to be icing on the cake, but if Rucker could prove that he will not have a big learning curve going back to having a hand on the ground, then he should still have a great chance of a 2nd round pick in a couple of months.
* Speaking of Tigers in the pros, nice to see Keyon Dooling nail a 3 and take a charge in the 4th against the Celtics. And Kleiza has been lighting it up in Denver, averaging over 23 points in 37 minutes in his last 5 games, bolstered by the 41 point effort, but with three straight games over 20. And Kareem Rush has averaged over 17 a game in his last 5 as he is starting for the depleted Pacers.
* Dwight Howard is INSANELY good at 22...came real close to 20-20 in his game against the C's with 5 blocks. I would say he is ahead of Garnett at this point, though they are different players to some extent in terms of where and how they play.
* I would just like to say I NEVER thought the Celtics would be like this, because I did not believe three stars like Allen (who I loved from UCONN), Garnett (hurt today but who I loved from MN) and Pierce (who I HATED from kU :-) would be able to play together. But WOW what a shot from Hedo for the win...I dont watch a lot of NBA, but that was a fun game with fun teams to watch.
* Bought a new to us car this weekend, a 2007 Nissan Altima. Will take delivery on Wednesday, it has one of those crazy things where you need to only have the key-fab thing on your person, and then hit a button to start the car. Neato