If Mizzou Baseball's going to snap out of its little funk, they might want to do so right...about...now. That's right, it's #8 Mizzou vs #12 Texas this weekend at Taylor Stadium. Here's the official release, and here's the weather report. Ggh.
And from weather.com...
The Trib has a nice piece on Aaron Crow, "One Murderous Crow". Also, trripleplay has done some research on what constitutes the national record for consecutive scoreless innings. Needless to say, if Crow's scoreless streak continues through tonight, he's going to have earned it that much more. Opponents have a season ERA of 7.48 against the 'Horns.
This was predictable: snakebitten Van Alexander has a torn ACL. According to Dave Matter, here's the current depth chart...OY.
Weakside
Sean Weatherspoon
Steve Redmond
Chad Collard (walk-on)Middle
Brock Christopher
Marlon Galbreath (walk-on)Strongside
Luke Lambert
Jeff Gettys (walk-on)
Cameron McWright (walk-on)
Now...I'm very confident in Lambert, so the loss of Alexander isn't tremendous in the sense that there's now a huge dropoff in the starting lineup. The dropoff comes in the fact that we've now got two walk-ons on the second string...heh, and apparently we only have two MLB's, period.
Not surprisingly, there's an injuries question...
AWOLTIger asks: All the talk about the injuries to sum them up, which one do you think has the most potential to have the biggest negative impact and why?
The one that scares me the most is the blood clot Andrew Gachkar had. Those things are serious. I'd argue Jason Horton never really recovered from the one he had as a senior in high school. Personally, and no one has told me this at all, but I'll believe Gachkar is going to play next season when I see him on the practice field in August. Until then, I'm skeptical.
Finally, Sunday Morning QB takes a look at "Nouveau Riche" Kansas.
Approximate Staying Power. Prepare for maximum skepticism due to the brand, the perceived (and likely real) talent gap and, obviously, the increased level of difficulty. None of the sudden, from-nowhere teams who have struck ten-win seasons without notice have hung around for long; I'm thinking of Oregon State in 2000, Iowa in 2002, Cal in 2004, Rutgers in 2006, even Penn State off a couple dismal years in 2005. None of those teams have matched their "breakout" year since, and none faced the steep incline in opposition Kansas will.
But none of them completely faded away, either, and KU doesn't seem very prone to fall immediately back into obscurity. Assuming Missouri is the same powerhouse it was last year (the Tigers should enter the season with much higher expectations), the Jayhawks can count on at least five other games - Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech, South Florida, revamped Nebraska - that project as tougher challenges than any of its regular season wins in `07. If it wins two of those and avoids the odd stumble, people will have to start buying in to the notion of Kansas as a power in the conference.