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On Monday, quarterback Drew Lock re-watched Purdue’s 35-3 beatdown on the Tigers last season. After Missouri started 1-5 in 2017, the loss to the Boilermakers seemed to sum up yet another disappointing season.
But that’s not the case anymore.
The Tigers rattled off six straight wins to go 7-5 and play in the Texas Bowl. Lock is regarded as one of the elite players in the country at his position. And most importantly, a Missouri fanbase is optimistic once again.
“We’re a different team now,” Lock said during Tuesday’s media availability. “There’s a different feel around here now, that’s the only reason I was able to watch it.”
It feels like this Missouri football team has a chip on its shoulders coming into this week’s matchup with Purdue. Although not explicitly said, it’s not hard to tell they want to go into West Lafayette, Ind. and embarrass the Boilermakers for what they did to the Tigers a year ago.
Lock and the rest of his teammates started a new touchdown celebration called, “Whammy!”, as made famous by David Koechner’s sports reporting character, Champ Kind, from the movie Anchorman. Lock posted a picture on Instagram Monday with that as the caption, “WHAMMMY”:
Hopefully lots of whammy celebrations will take place on the Ross-Ade Stadium grass come Saturday.
Head coach Barry Odom stressed that him and his staff have talked to the players about the 2017 loss to Purdue so much over the last year or so that he doesn’t feel the need to stress that again this week.
The players know very well what happened.
Odom Reflects on Where He Was During the 9/11 Attacks
We’re getting to a point in time that college athletes don’t know very well what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. At this point, they were five, six years old at the most. Odom vividly remembers where he was during the terrorist attacks 17 years ago.
Odom was coaching and teaching just a couple miles south of MU on Providence Rd. at Rock Bridge High School. He found out about the attacks on the radio, and immediately went upstairs to watch the news unfold on one of the most infamous days in U.S. history. He mentioned that although many games were cancelled that week, the Bruins still played Fulton that Friday.