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Fighting roster attrition, Mizzou has just enough to win on the road

In a year where you’re just trying to get from week to week, a road win is a great sign moving forward.

By Sam Snelling
NCAA Football: Missouri at South Carolina Jeff Blake-USA TODAY Sports

Everything is so weird.

All week we were spending our waning moments doing roster math and trying to determine if Mizzou would have enough players to even play this game while South Carolina was going through the firing of their head coach and multiple players on their team opting to defect to the NFL draft. With both teams and rosters in differing amounts of disarray, there was a football game.

But here’s the nice part of the mulligan season, none of it matters... so whatever bad happens you can chalk it up to a stupid pandemic and general weirdness of having to field a football team through it, and whatever good happens you point to as a building block for a new coaching staff imprinting a different kind of success onto the program. So basically nothing matters, except what matters.

It’s beautiful really.

Mizzou’s journey this season started with two disappointing losses, but understandable ones at that. They recovered and suddenly the mood changed. The Florida loss was a setback, sure, but then they had to sit around for weeks. Fighting through positive COVID tests and more roster attrition, they finally made it to game week for South Carolina. Because this season is such a weird one, nobody knew what would happen. The Tigers were supposed to have 53 players available for the game and they were technically short. They fudged the numbers by calling Kobie Whiteside, Larry Borom, and Xavier Delgado ‘available’ in a sense they could probably stand out on the field in uniform if needed, but they were not in playing shape.

Through all that, Mizzou took a 17-0 lead into the halftime tunnel. They were able to take advantage of terrific field position enough to score a couple touchdowns on drives of 46 and 58 yards, and a field goal on 54 yards. The second half was a struggle, but considering the depth issues — and the lack of actual playing much football lately — it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise.

What matters is they held on. They found a way. The dreaded backup quarterback came into the game and provided the South Carolina offense a spark, but that spark wasn’t enough. In total, neither team ran the ball well, neither team passed the ball well, but Mizzou won the field position battle and racked up fewer penalties. Through it all, they got the win.

Football is better than no football, and wins are better than losses. Arkansas next week.

south carolina statbroadcast 2020
south carolina statbroadcast 2020

Here are your other SEC scores:

  • 1. Alabama 63, Kentucky 3
  • 6. Florida 38, Vanderbilt 17
  • 13. Georgia 31, Mississippi State 24
  • 23. Auburn 30, Tennessee 17
  • LSU 27, Arkansas 24

Texas A&M and Ole Miss were postponed,

Yesterday at Rock M

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