Mizzou Links, 4-17-12

First things first: Kim English will be on The Closers this evening. Leave your questions here, and listen here around 4:30 p.m. CT.

Mizzou Football Links

• Season Tickets
  MUtigers.com: Mizzou Athletics Announces Launch of 2012 Football Season Ticket Waiting List
  KC Star (Campus Corner): Season tickets and barnstorming
• Spring Wrap-Up
  The Trib (Dave Matter): Missouri's spring has sprung: A look back

  Missouri's thin defensive line, especially up the middle, is going to wear down too easily against all those brutish running games in the SEC, right? Here's something I came across while crunching some numbers. Missouri's seven new opponents in the SEC (Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Kentucky) averaged 38.1 rushing attempts a game last year. South Carolina and Georgia ran it more than 40 times a game. Last year's nine Big 12 opponents averaged 40.1 rushing attempts per game, with five averaging more than 40 attempts per game, with three running more than 45 times a game: Texas, Kansas State and Kansas. On average, teams ran more plays in the Big 12, where the no-huddle is more prevalent, as seven Big 12 teams ran more than 950 plays from scrimmage, compared to just one in the SEC, Georgia at 1,016. (Georgia and LSU played 14 games, while the most anyone played in the Big 12 was 13. Still, Big 12 teams averaged 76.2 plays per game last year; the SEC teams averaged 65.5 plays.)

  What am I getting at? Maybe lacking excessive depth across the D-line won't hurt Missouri as much some think. The Missouri defense figures to be on the field for fewer plays in the SEC and defenders have more time between snaps to catch their breath. Maybe some of those differences in style will mitigate any depth issues the Tigers have along the front four.

  Then again, Missouri gets back one big piece of that front four come August. Richardson posted this on Twitter and Facebook shortly after the Black and & Gold Game: " … had fun watchin the boys get after each other but know DADDY'S back for summer and fall camp"

  PowerMizzou: Standouts of Spring

  Shane Ray: Ray was a terror coming around the end and consistently looked like Missouri's best pass rusher. The Tigers aren't likely in the market for a starter at defensive end, but Ray's performance this spring made it impossible to keep him out of the rotation.

  Matt Hoch: Perhaps the biggest spring surprise, in his first showing at defensive tackle, Hoch was good. He came to Mizzou as a tight end, moved to defensive end and is now inside. At the thinnest position on the Tiger roster, the team desperately needed someone to step forward. Hoch did.

  PowerMizzou: What We Learned: Quarterback
  ESPN.com (SEC Blog): Recapping Missouri's spring game
  Mizzou Network: ESPN's SEC Blogger On Mizzou
• 2013 Recruiting
  HighSchoolSports.net: Player Profile: Zumwalt South RB Chase Abbington
• More Reactions To Uniforms
  Mr. SEC: Mizzou's New Nike Duds Not As Bad As They Might Have Been
• SPOOOOOOOOOOON
  We Are Mizzou: Sean Weatherspoon Interviews Teammates

Other Football Links

• PLAYoff?
  CBS Sports: How to divide bigger pie becomes focus of BCS groups

Mizzou Basketball Links

• Oriakhi
  CBS Local (Jon Rothstein): Addition Of Ex-UConn Bruiser Alex Oriakhi Has Frank Haith Excited For Missouri's Next Chapter
• Pollard
  Rivals.com: Bossi's Mailbag: What are the plans looking like for Devonta Pollard?

Other Mizzou Links

So I'm not even going to pretend that I follow MMA here. I follow it only so far as I can keep up with former Missouri wrestlers. I'm thrilled that Ben Askren is succeeding and making a name for himself, and I'm thrilled that he's still Ben Askren, the weird, outspoken guy we got to know here at Mizzou. My only contributions to the conversation below are 1) I assume he has kind of screwed himself when it comes to getting "called up" to UFC, and 2) I love that he's on the right side of the issue. From all I've been able to glean, Dana White is basically a real-life Vince McMahon, and while you need to be on White's good side to get called up to UFC, it's sad that his response to "Dana saying testing his fighters would be impossible is a bold faced lie" is "You're a boring fighter!" Alas.

• Askren
  MMA Mania: Ben Askren says Dana White is lying about the impossibility of random UFC drug tests

  Not impossible, just expensive.

  That's according to Bellator Welterweight Champion Ben Askren, who ripped the Las Vegas fight boss on his official Twitter account earlier today (April 16, 2012), claiming that White's assertion was a "bold faced lie."

  The USOC random tests Olympic athletes in all sports. Dana saying testing his fighters would be impossible is a bold faced lie. Just making a statement about a level playing field. I didn't say it wouldn't be expensive just that it is not impossible.

  White insists the UFC and various athletic commissions do more drug testing than anyone else in sports, including the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB).

  Bloody Elbow: UFC President Dana White: 'When Ambien Can't Sleep, It Takes Ben Askren'

  Taking shots at Dana and then having Dana say that he'd rather watch flies engage in coitus than watch you fight can't bode well for a fighter's future.

  And let's all be honest here, Ben Askren is a miserably boring fighter.

  He can continue to get upset at fans and media who call him out on his particularly boring style of fighting and the fact that he only has one stoppage win since arriving at Bellator (and that was a bad call by the ref against Ryan Thomas), but the fact remains that he has done nothing to make him someone that is "must see."

  Winning is obviously the most important thing, but having a reputation of putting on bad fights and then insulting the fans who boo your performance isn't exactly a going to fast track you to the big stage. Now, Ben even has Dana upset with him.

  It's good news for Bellator though as I'm sure they'll have Ben fighting in their promotion for a good long while now.

  MMA Torch: UFC's Dana White, Bellator's Ben Askren engage in spat over drug testing issue in UFC
  Bloody Elbow: How Exactly Is Bellator Champ Ben Askren Funky?
• Mizzou Baseball
  MUtigers.com: Mizzou Baseball Launches Student Fan Section: Tigers On Deck
  SimmonsField.com: MU Tigers on Deck
  SimmonsField.com: Where MU stands, What MU needs
• Mizzou Tennis
  Mizzou Network: Mizzou vs. Kansas
• Mizzou Women's Basketball
  MUtigers.com: Flores Selected in WNBA Draft
  The Missourian: Missouri forward Christine Flores drafted to WNBA
• Mizzou Wrestling
  MUtigers.com: Wrestling Announces Season Awards
• Mizzou Women's Golf
  MUtigers.com: Women's Golf Welcomes Katherine Hepler

Other

• Coachella
  Stereogum: Watch Radiohead, Bon Iver, St. Vincent And More Play Coachella 2012