By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor(
MIZ)—The first, the longest, the biggest—-Harrison Mevis’ long-range leg became the deciding factor in what might become the most consequential Missouri football game in years. Missouri beat Kansas State, the nation’s 15th ranked team, 30-27 as the clock stopped at 0:00 Saturday afternoon.
Mevis kicked the winning field goal from 61-yards, a Southeastern Conference record. (Tom Whelihan holds the team record with a 62-yard kick against Colorado twenty-seven years ago, long before Missouri joined the Big 12).
Quarterback Brady Cook and a tenacious Tiger defense kept the Wildcats under control even when K-State took the lead and then took it back (there were 7 lead changes in the game). Cook, gimpy with a knee injury in the second half finished with 356 passing yards, two passing touchdowns and one running touchdown.
The win brings Coach Eli Drinkwitz’s record at Mizzou to .500, with twenty of each wins and losses. It is the first win against a ranked team at Faurot Field in almost a decade (November 30, 2013 against the Texas A&M, ranked nineteenth, 28-21).
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The University has been fined $100,000 by the SEC because it let jubilant fans swarm onto the field while the players, coaches, officials, and others essential to the game were still there. A repeat performance will make the fine a quarter-million dollars and a third offense will cost the University a half-million. The rule has a couple of reasons for being: public safety and what at firt appeared to be a penalty flag on the play. Turned out to be something thrown onto the field by someone else. But clearing the field for another play would have been impossible or nearly so.
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The victory cost K-State its place among the top 25 teams in the country. But it didn’t elevate the Tigers into those ranks. They’re just outside, though. The AP puts Missouri 27th in ratings points, barely behind Clensom K-State is 28th and trail Misosuri by 18.
The USA TODAY Coaches Poll leaves Kansas State ahead of Missouri but 26th with Missouri 27th. The CBS Poll ranks Missouri 26th; K-State 27th.
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The last time Missouri started 3-0 was 2018. They haven’t gone 4-0 since 2014. The Tigers play Memphis and Vanderbilt in their next two games. Memphis beat Navy last weekend 28-24 to also go 3-0. Vanderbilt lost to UNLV 40-37 Saturday night to drop to 2-2, with Kentucky next weekend. (ZOU)
(CHIEFS)—If end zones were eleven or twelve yards wide instead of ten, the Kansas City Chiefs might be 0-2. The end zone, however, at ten yards, was one footstep short for the Jacksonville Jaguars three times and the Chiefs escaped Jacksonville with a 17-9 win to go 1-1 for the year.
The Chiefs were troubled by penalty after penalty, a dozen of them for 94 yards and have yet to show dominance in the regular season this year—-remembering that last year’s offensive coordinator, Eric Bienemy, whose team Washington Commanders team is 2-0 for the first time since 2011 after beating Denver 35-33.
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Well, let’s look around and see if there is another major league sport to talk about, there sure is. Or, at least, one of its players
(WAINO)—For one more night, he was the Adam Wainwright we remember. Seven shutout innings (a Cardinals record for a pitcher so old), only four hits, three strikeouts and two walks. Fifty-eight of his 93 pitches were strikes last night against the league-leading Brewers.
Wilson Contreras homered in the fourth for the only run in the game and for once Wainwright and the bullpen made a slim lead hold up. Ryan Helsley pitched his first four-out save since mid-May to preserve it.
He’s the 122nd pitcher in Major League history to record 200 wins. He is, by far, the winningest pitcher in the game today—
Wainwright is the third Cardinals pitcher to reach 200 in a Cardinal uniform, joining Bob Gibson 251 (who spent his career only in a Cardinals uniform), and Jesse Haines, (210 all with the Cardinals except one game for the Reds in which he pitch for five innings with no decision in 1918).
For the next few days he will be one of five active major league pitchers with 200 wins (Justin Verlander, 255; Zack Greinke (224), Max Scherzer (214) and Clayton Kershaw (209).
As far as the rest of baseball, well—-
Gratefully, we are down to the last dozen or so games of this season for both of our teams. Our teams are a combined 114-185 (66 of the wins belong to the Cardinals and 102 of the losses belong to the Royals). In in-state standings, the Cardinals began the week with a comfortable 20 game lead on the Royals, long ago locking up the championship of Missouri. The Cardinals have used 51 players this year, 28 of them pitchers. The Royals have used 57, of which 34 pitched. Four Royals pitchers are a combined 14-53.
Jordan Lyles leads major league baseball with 17 losses (four wins, though). Zach Greinke is number two with 15 (also one win). Brady Singer ranks sixth (eight wins) , one of five with 11 losses. One of those tied with him in 6th place is St. Louis’s Adam Wainwright (with five wins now). Tied for tenth is Carlos Hernandez (who also has a win for the Royals), one of seven ten-game losers this year.
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And for the few who care but don’t know what they’re missing, let’s look at the sports of motor.
(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin nailed down the final spot in the rount of 12 NASCAR playoffs while four other guys, except for one, started thinking about next year. The night race at Bristol, one of the favorite events of the schedule each year, was the cutdown race for the first playoff round.
Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick—both former NASCAR Cup Champions—didn’t make the cut. Neither did Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Michael McDowell.
Hamlin outran Kyle Larson by two-and-a-half secondsafter the lsst pit stop with Christopher Bell taking the other podium spot.
Joey Logano became the first defending champion to fail to make the second round of playffs in the next year., His car was too badly damaged to continue in a five-car backstretch wreck. It was hard for him to accept being out of the championship competition. “You get ouf the race like that and you’re behind the wall and you’re in denial for a minute. You don’t want to believe that it happeed and you want to think that it’s fixable, but the car was tore up too bad,” he said afterward.
On the other end was Hamlin after his third win of the year and 51st of his career: “It’s our year. I just feel like we’ve got it all put together. We’ve got the speed (at) every single type of racetrack. Nothing to stop us at this point.”
The playoff field now is William Byron, Martin Truex Jr., Hamlin, Larson, Chris Buescher, Kyle Busch, Bell, Tyler Reddick, Ross Chastain, Brad Keselowski, and Bubba Wallace.
The next three-race round is at Texas Motor Speedway next weekend.
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We add this sad note this week the Ovarian Cancer has finally claimed the life of Sherry Pollex, the longtime partner of Martin Truex Jr. The two had been together for 19 years before announcing their separation in January. She was 44 and got her first diagnosis nine years ago. She finished her first chemotherapy two years later. But in September, 2021 she was told cancer was back and was in her lungs.
She and Truex founded a foundation in 2007 to raise money to fight childhood cancer. It raised more than four million dollars. In 2020 she and the foundation worked to open the Sherry Strong Integrative Medicine Oncology Clinic in Charlotte, NC.
She was a familiar face in the NASCAR garages and the NASCAR community on behalf of the fight against cancer.
Truex commented after her death Sunday, “From the very minute of her disagnosis, Sherry was determined to not only fight ovarian cancer with everything she had, but also make a difference in the lives of others battling this terrible disease. Through her tireless charity work for so many years, her legacy will live well beyond our lifetimes and continue to help countless families.”
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(FORMULA 1)—The Streaks are over in Formula One. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz emphatically ended it with the Grand Prix of Singapore, holding off Lando Norris of McLaren and Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes to the end. The Best Red bull and Max Verstappen could do was fifth, ending Red Bull’s string of 15 straight races and ending Verstappen’s record string of victories at 10.
(Photo credits: MLB.COM and Bob Priddy)