A season-turning win? It’s possible!

Things haven’t been awesome for Larissa Anderson’s Mizzou Tigers this season.

Despite a fast start, the Tigers have sputtered to start conference play, bringing an overall SEC record of 1-8 to their weekend series against No. 17/13 Alabama. That record didn’t improve at all after consecutive 4-0 defeats.

Sunday was a different story.

Led by Chantice Phillips, Mizzou run-ruled the nationally ranked Tide, taking home an 11-3 win after only 5 innings of play. After two consecutive defeats, Anderson had predicted this might be coming.

“The floodgates are gonna open up,” [Anderson] said [prior to Sunday’s game]. “It’s gonna be, watch out. All we need is a couple people to hit the ball hard and then it’s going to take the pressure off, but when you have a team that’s not hitting the ball well, everybody feels the pressure that they have to get the job done.”

The win not only prevented a sweep, it hopefully will serve as a launching pad moment for the Tigers, who get LSU next. While perusing the athletic department’s official take on the game, I did happen upon some fun facts I thought would be worth sharing.

The Tigers won on a run rule by a score of 11-3. This is the ninth time Missouri has defeated an opponent on a run rule, and the first time in SEC play.

Laurin Krings continued her ascent toward 400 career strikeouts. She sits 10th in Missouri program history with 385 Ks.

Sunday marked Missouri’s second win over an SEC top-25 opponent. Overall, the Tigers have four ranked wins in 2023.

Missouri set a new weekend attendance record of 8,113 after welcoming a program-best 3,021 fans on Saturday. Missouri capped the weekend with an attendance total of 2,779 Sunday. The new weekend total surpassed 7,997 set at the 2021 NCAA Super Regionals.

Here’s to hoping the Tigers are on track sooner than later. Karen has a recap of the series coming out early this morning.

Yesterday at Rock M

• In which Sam argues that it’s time for Caleb Love to come home and learn at the feet of Dennis Gates
• In which the transfer portal tracker gets updated with another day’s worth of news
• In which March Madness is wrapping up... but not for Mizzou Gymnastics! (Not technically yesterday, but it deserved some more attention!)

More Links:

• Read into this at your own discretion.

• Mizzou Baseball fought hard, but couldn’t prevent a sweep at the hands of No. 12/13 Kentucky with a 3-1 loss on Sunday. Steve Bieser’s Tigers, now 19-9 have a showdown with Vanderbilt coming soon.
• At The Bruzzy — which definitely sounds like a rap album which Pitchfork would give a score between 7.0 and 7.3 — Mizzou Women’s Golf finishes 10th overall. They’ll head to the SEC Championships next week.
• This morning, the men’s golf team will kick off The Cowboy Classic in Wyoming, where the Tigers are one of three teams out of 21 currently ranked in the Top 50.
• Mizzou Tennis suffered its fifth straight defeat, dropping its match to No. 25 South Carolina this weekend.
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