Mizzou baseball loses to Florida, 5-4, to open final regular season series

Tough loss for the Tigers on Thursday night in Columbia, as Missouri nearly erased a 5-1 deficit but fell 5-4 to the Gators.

Missouri led 1-0 after four innings, but Florida scored four in the fifth and another in the sixth to chase Missouri starter Konnor Ash. Jacob Castleberry entered and through four innings of no-hit, shut-out ball, and Missouri loaded the bases with no outs in the seventh. The Tigers ended up scoring three runs on just two hits — none after the bases were loaded — but Peter Zimmerman struck out with the bases loaded again to end the inning.

The Tigers went down in order in the eighth and ninth to end the game.

Good news? Missouri gets TJ Sikkema throwing on Friday night to try to even out the series.

Softball heads west to kick-off postseason play in LA

Missouri softball starts its postseason run on Friday night, as the Tigers face Call State-Fullerton at 7:30 p.m. CT. The game will be broadcast by ESPNU and on WatchESPN.com.

Here’s the preview from MUTigers.com.

Should Missouri — the two-seed in the regional — win on Friday, it will face the winner of UCLA vs. Weber State. A loss would pit Missouri against the loser of UCLA vs. Weber State in an elimination game.

Jontay Porter explains second knee injury: ‘I felt invincible’

Good read from Alex Schiffer of the Kansas City Star, who spoke with Jontay Porter in Chicago at the NBA Draft Combine. Porter goes in-depth about his recent ACL tear, the second one he suffered in less than a year.

Porter explained to Schiffer that he “felt invincible” and rushed back, playing basketball with his brother Michael (you may have heard of him) one night after a Denver Nuggets game.

Porter also calls it an “idiotic mistake” in the article.

Tough lesson to learn, but here’s to hoping Jontay can avoid the injury bug as he begins his NBA career. It looks like the injury hasn’t slowed him down too much, judging from his combine measurements:

Yesterday at Rock M

• Taking stock of the roster situation with the addition of Kobe Brown
• Handicapping Johnathon Johnson’s pursuit of the MU career receiving record
• Rock M Radio: Cuonzo Martin meets with the media, Mizzou’s scholarship and 2020 recruiting

More Links:

• Drew Lock took the first hit of his NFL career. Only it happened when his airport shuttle was involved in a collision, per TMZ. Luckily, he’s OK. Now he can get back to worrying about Mr. Nice Guy, Joe Flacco. Lock, to his credit, says Flacco “has been great to (him).”
• Speaking of the Broncos, Connor McGovern has grown into a take-charge leader of Denver’s offensive line, writes Mike Kils of 9News.com.
• Sophie, we miss you, but it’s great to see you hitting big buckets for the Phoenix Mercury:

• Hey, blue bloods! Stop offering Caleb Love.
• Mizzou associate head swim and dive coach Mark Gangloff is the new head coach at North Carolina.