Anatomy of a Magical Season on RMN: Non-conference edition!

Call it nostalgia, call it not letting go, call it "not ready to focus on the diamond sports yet." Whatever you call it, we're not ready to let this past basketball season die. This is the first of a three-part installment that will look at the magical season that was, as seen through the archives of posts, FanPosts, FanShots and comments on RMN. Today's installment takes a look at the non-conference portion of the season.

• Oct. 29: RMN's basketball pants begin tingling with Marcus Denmon's 36-point explosion in the Black and Gold game. Turd Ferguson's FanPost notes a "pretty good home schedule." All sane human beings see the schedule and expect at least one home loss. SleepyFloyd, who coached the Gold team, must rebuild his self-confidence from scratch after Beau Beyman and Kevin Lewis' team take the KFRU team to the woodshed. 
• Nov. 15: Missouri beats Prairie View A&M 86-65 in the season opener, a game no one cares about because it immediately precedes Mizzou football's North division-clinching win against Iowa State. The biggest revelation? The appearance of The Ladies Man on PVAMU's roster.
• Nov. 17: Mizzou drills Chattanooga at Mizzou Arena. However, the Live Thread is taken over by Scoops Callahan and MCBoomofDoom's Skittle Drank.
• Nov. 20: RMN has its first real controversy of the basketball season, as Mizzou's inability to hit free throws in a loss to Xavier pits The Beef's "This is Anderson's fault" camp against Calim and my "How is that his fault?" camp. At this point, we realize RMN has presided over some pretty damn good times to have been able to avoid a lot of arguments like these.
• Nov. 21: MIssouri beats Fairfield. Thanks to an extension for Gary Pinkel, no one seems to care.
• Nov. 23: Mizzou gets a BIG non-conference win over USC, but the most interesting moment in the Live Thread is a USC fan stopping by to thank our "thugs" for injuring a Trojan. Laurence Bowers = thug? 
• Nov. 30: Mizzou's win over Oral Roberts precedes The Boy's first statistical review of the season and the debut of "Jaureth Bamford" (Justin Safford, Laurence Bowers, Keith Ramsey).
• Dec. 2: Arkansas-Pine Bluff gets beaten with an ugly stick by Missouri at Mizzou Arena. The 26-comment Live Thread is RMN-speak for "Nobody cares." MCBoomofDoom reiterates his irrational hate of Matt Lawrence in the statistical review.

More after the jump...

• Dec. 7: Before the Cal game, Atchison implores the Roundtable members to watch this basketball team. ZouDave reports that his "giveashit" is still broken. After one of the most impressive wins of the season, pinkelposse has the most eloquent and concise review of the game, or at least which column it gets filed under.
• Dec. 13 and Dec. 20: Wins over Murray State and Stetson, in which the sole conversation is about the excellence of the Hatters mascot.
• Dec. 23: Not coincidentally, the absolute worst of Mizzou basketball brings out the absolute best in Rock M Nation. There's Cheese Cat Fail, the Lou Brown thread, the ignoring of the game for puppies and kittens, AND (lest we forget) the creation of "Grey Goose" for Matt Lawrence. ghtd36 adds a photo that becomes the sole link in the following day's Mizzou Links. Mitch cumstein pleads for us to kill the Braggin' Rights series.
• Dec. 27: Mizzou beats SIU-Edwardsville. 64 percent of voters at RMN name the MVP as "Who cares? It was SIUE."
• Dec. 30: Missouri beats the GENTLEMEN of Centenary in a game so unimportant we almost forget about it as it happens.
• Jan. 3: Perhaps the turning point of the season, as Mizzou comes away with a road win over Georgia in Athens. Kim English earns his short-lived "Mr. Courvorsier" nickname. Keith Ramsey's transition block earns him a good ol' mancrush from The Boy. For the first time ever, I drop Goose's official GIF.
• Jan. 6: The Boy reaffirms at the beginning of the statistical piece that he has "never been much of a fan of torture porn." The famous Bowers alley-oop means The Boy has two mancrushes, meaning that he does have a thing for athletic big men.