It may have been a home loss to a team with a losing record in conference, but a couple folks saw some encouraging signs in Tuesday night's loss to OSU. Steve Walentik says Leo Lyons' performance was possibly the most dominant he's ever seen in person.
He was 12 for 13 from the field. He blocked three shots and altered a handful of others. Oklahoma State simply had no way of shutting him down until Marcus Dove finally denied him the ball on Darryl Butterfield's three-quarter court inbounds pass with 1.7 seconds left.
Every time the Cowboys played Lyons to drive, he drained a jumper in his defender's face. Rarely, did they even hit the rim. Every time, OSU jumped out on him to contest those shots, he put the ball on the floor and blew by his man, one time throwing in a reverse layup from underneath the backboard.
He posted up. He faced up. He defended. And I was once again reminded why Lyons once attracted the interest of schools like Kentucky, Marquette and, yes, Oklahoma State. I watched Lyons and understood how it was he shined at the ABCD camp as a prep star going into his senior season, scoring and rebounding with the likes of Gerald Green, Greg Oden, Monta Ellis and Andray Blatche, who are all playing in the NBA right now.
Gabe Dearmond takes the rhetoric even further. Apparently hope is back.
I don't want to go overboard and say Tuesday night was a turning point or a revelation, but I think it was something good for the Missouri basketball program. For maybe the first time since I started covering this team again four-and-a-half years ago, I walked out of Mizzou Arena feeling pretty darn good about the direction this program is headed.
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Next year's Tigers, no disrespect intended to the incoming recruits, are going to go as far as Keon and Leo and J.T. can take them. This is going to be their team next year. Combine them with a healthy DeMarre Carroll and a Matt Lawrence that will have more depth around him and won't be asked to do more than he's capable of doing and you've got a solid nucleus for the 2008-09 Tigers.
Yesterday was Receivers Day for PowerMizzou's spring football preview. Here's a hint: they're gonna be pretty good.
PowerMizzou's got a basketball recruiting article up as well (busy day at PM!): they interview one of Mizzou's top 2009 targets, Michael Snaer.
Will Franklin: happy with his Combine performance.
Nice home opener for Mizzou Softball against SLU: a 6-0 win, and a 10-0 no-hitter for Stacy Delaney. The Missourian has more.
After an almost completely successful trip to Florida (until that pesky final inning against UCF), Mizzou Baseball heads to the other coast for the USD Tournament in San Diego against USD, SDSU, Cal, and Cal Poly (one of these things...not like the other ones...)
Dammit...I don't get to watch Sean Salisbury call John Clayton "Sponge Bob" anymore...
Finally, I have positively no earthly idea what compelled them to write this, but the Missourian wrote a cricket primer yesterday. This is actually good because ESPN360 seemingly always has a cricket game playing, and I continuously watch 5 minutes of it, then get pissy because I have no idea what's going on. Thank you, Missourian!
