Missouri’s last great hope to capture a team title in the 2020-2021 season is officially over.

Mizzou Softball, fresh off a 7-0 shellacking to force Game 3 of their Super Regional with James Madison, couldn’t recapture the magic on Sunday afternoon, falling 7-2 to end their season with a record of 42-17.

While a season-ending loss is always a bitter pill to swallow, the nature of the loss made things a little sour as well. Missouri, regularly a sound team in every function, struggled with errors of all sorts in their most important game of the season, surrendering 12 total hits and making several key errors that sparked the JMU rallies.

The 2020-2021 Tigers, while unable to reach the WCWS, recaptured the magic that dominated the program earlier in the 21st century. It’s a particularly exciting moment to be a fan, considering how many of Missouri’s key players will be back in the coming years to continue the race for the first program championship.

Unfortunately, the end of the season always means saying goodbye to key seniors. Seven players will graduate at the end of this season, and while program stalwarts like Brooke Wilmes and Kimberly Wert will be staying an extra year, Hatti Moore and Cayla Kessinger played in their final games in the black and gold.

And while this is certainly a disappointing end to a wonderful season, Coach Anderson sees it as the beginning of a new era of success.

“This mission has been almost two years in the making,” Anderson said. “There could have been more sanctions and drama and the team could have fallen apart. But they continued to battle and they had their sites set on what they just accomplished.

“It’s just going to motivate them from here on out, and say we’re hosting every single year.”

Yesterday at Rock M

• The Heartbreak of Getting So Close
• Mizzou Forces Game Three on Long Ball

More Links:

• Braylen Blue, a 2023 basketball recruit, has Mizzou on his list of official visits coming up this summer.
• “What happened to all Mizzou’s cornerbacks,” is a question we asked earlier this week, and it seems Coach Drinkwitz has been asking the same thing. He’s trying to fill the void on the depth chart with Tulsa transfer Akayleb Evans, who announced today that Mizzou is one of his top five schools.
• It was “move-in” day for a host of new Mizzou Football Tigers, and the official account welcomed them with a bang (aka a video.) Play, “spot the recruit!”
• Ben Hochman at the Post-Dispatch wrote about the traveling band of Mizzou coaches who are trying to build (and cultivate) relationships around the state.

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