What a dominant weekend for Mizzou Baseball against a Toledo team that had been hitting pretty well before their trip to Columbia. Friday night: Mizzou 6, Toledo 0 (Aaron Crow strikes out freaking 15). Saturday: Mizzou 10, Toledo 0 (Ian Berger strikes out 9). Sunday (Game 1): Mizzou 3, Toledo 1 (Kyle Gibson K's 11 but actually gives up a run). Sunday (Game 2): Mizzou 11, Toledo 6 (Just about everybody in the rested bullpen gets in an inning). If anybody else has a better 3-man rotation, I'd like to see it. Crow, Berger, and Gibson are a combined 10-0 with a 1.41 ERA. SICK, SICK, SICK.
Meanwhile, all the Mizzou Softball team has done is win 19 games in a row. Beat Bradley on Wednesday, and they tie the school record. Beat Bradley again on Wednesday, and they have the longest win streak in school history. And as the Trib notes, they're showing they can win with offense or pitching.
Some football recruiting updates: Sheldon Richardson's doing his best Andrew Jones impersonation, while Texas athlete Kenric McNeal likes Mizzou quite a bit. Sounds like there were quite a few visitors in town for this weekend's practice.
Speaking of which, the usual suspects have Saturday practice reports: Dave Matter, PowerMizzou, Graham Watson. Sounds like DBs like Castine Bridges and Kevin Rutland are playing pretty well, though that may have something to do with the fact that so many WRs have been out (Danario's obviously not practicing, and Jared Perry was at his brother's wedding...plus Jon Gissinger's hurt). Blake May was playing with the first string, if that gives you any indication.
More football! Dave Matter talks about the challengers for the punting job, plus he has a nice Meet Elvis Fisher blogpost to complement his Friday Trib piece about the new starters on the O-line.
Finally, I almost decided to go the entire Post-Selection Sunday Links without a basketball link, but...basketball post-mortems! The KC Star points out that 2007-08 was a nice step backwards for Mike Anderson's program, while the Missourian takes the optimistic route--the disappointments of this season lead to hope for next season.
Next year, the Tigers will welcome seven new players to their roster: freshmen Laurence Bowers, Marcus Denmon, Kimmie English, Steve Moore and Miguel Paul, junior college transfer Keith Ramsey and Zaire Taylor, who becomes eligible after sitting out this season under the NCAA’s rules. With that much change to the roster after a disappointing season, it’s unlikely the Tigers will have the same kind of buzz before next year that they had before this season.
There has even been some talk that Lyons, a junior, will skip his final season in pursuit of professional basketball. It’s unlikely that Lyons would be selected in the NBA Draft, in which only 60 players are picked each year, but playing basketball in Europe could be an option.
Such a development would parallel junior guard Thomas Gardner’s decision to pass on his senior year after the 2005-06 seasonbut wasn’t selected in the NBA draft and played professionally in Europe.
The glimmer of light is which players could return for Missouri next year.
If Lyons chooses to stay for his final year, the Tigers would have their five leading scorers back, if you don’t include Stefhon Hannah, who was dismissed from the team in early February. Joining Lyons would be Carroll, Matt Lawrence, Keon Lawrence and J.T. Tiller.
"I think some of the foundation, you can see, some of it’s laid," Anderson said. "That’s why we had the movement with our young guys."
So we're officially calling him Kimmie? Just making sure...