(MIZ)—-Mizzou whomped Massachusetts last weekend. It would be news if they hadn’t, so let’s look ahead to a real-world game against Auburn next Saturday.
Auburn is 2-4 with a 31-13 loss to Georgia before their bye week. They come into the game against Missouri with three single-score losses to Cal, Arkansas and Oklahoma.
It’s Tigers against Tigers on Saturday, Aubie against Truman in the mascot matchup. Missouri has won seven straight games at Faurot Field.
Missouri started rehabilitating itself against Massachusetts and gaining back two of the 12 slots it lost because of the Texas A&M debacle and heads into the game this weekend 19th and 16th in the polls.
Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze says he “couldn’t be more pleased” with the hard work of his defensive staff. But the Auburn Tigers have given up increasing numbers of points in four straight games with scores of 21-14, 24-14, 27-24, and 31-13.
Freeze says he and Missouri Coach Eli Drinkwitz are “made of a similar mindset of what coaching should be about.” Both were were assistance under Gus Malzahn during Malzahn’s eight-season stretch as head coach at Auburn. He says Missouri has “veteran guys that have proven to be some of the best in this lea whether they’re going against the top-tiered corners and safeties or not…It’s going to be a great test for us.” Freeze says Auburn has to keep Missouri from making “explosive plays..” noting the matchup of Missouri’s receivers “is not one that you get overjoyed about” when you have a young secondary.
It’s Homecoming in Columbia, where the Tigers are undefeated. But they are 1-3 against Auburn, including a loss in the 2013 SEC championship game. The last time the two teams met, Auburn and Freeze beat Drinkwitz and Missouri 17-14 in overtime. Missouri has not beaten Auburn since 1973.
Missouri has been quiet about the apparent shoulder injury that forced Luther Burden III out of the game Saturday. Drinkwitz has said he will wait until the SEC injury report tomorrow to have more information.
(TIGER BASETBALL)—The media has pretty low expectations for Missouri basketball this season. The conference basketball writers poll slots the Tigers men at 13th in the SEC this year. Missouri has been shut out in the pre-season list of the top three all-conference player list.
Statistician Kem Pomeroy’s KenPom rankings also puts Missouri 13th in the SEC and 53rd in the nation despite the Tigers having a top-13 transfer class and a top-five recruiting class.
Missouri will start trying to prove the raters wrong on November 4th when they open at Memphis.
The sports writers don’t expect much more from the Missouri women. They are picked to finish 15th in the SEC, with only Arkansas getting less respect in the pre-season outlook. Tiger women were 2-14 in the conference last year which is two more wins than the men’s team got. The lady Tigers have no players on the first or second pre-season all-conference teams.
Tiger women tip off the season against Vermont, in Burlington. They start the season with two true freshmen and four new transfers. (ZOU)
(CHIEFS)—Rashee Rice has had surgery on his injured knee. The good news is that it’s not a torn ACL. The bad news, according to coach Andy Reid, is that it’s the posterolateral corner that was hurt. “It’s probably the same result you’d get time-wise ,” says Reid. “It takes a while for that to come back.
Latest word on wide receiver Hollywood Brown: Don’t look for him this year. He’ll remain on the Il with his shoulder injury until the end of 2024.
And Isiah Pacheco: He has no timeline as he recovers from a broken fibula.
(BASEBALL)—The Royals finished off a gratifying season with a loss in the second round of the American League playoffs. The Cardinals packed it in after the regular 162 games.
Now will come weeks of speculation about trades, losses, desertions, free agent movements, and what the team should do and what trades it should make and so on and so forth.
When the teams DO something, it will appear in this column.
(SPORTS WAGERING)—Missourians will vote next month on whether to make betting on sports legal in this state. Regular readers of bobpriddy.net know that your observer of the sports scene doesn’t mind people voting on the issue but they realize he considers the casino proposal disingenuous at best and filled with lies at the worst.
Do what you want, but don’t vote for sports wagering with the idea that you’ll be doing anything noble for education—or for anybody else but the casinos and the teams. And watch for whether any of the teams expecting taxpayers to build them billion-dollar stadia or making millions of dollars in improvements on existing playing fields indicate they’ll spend any of the betting profits on those projects, thus lessening the investments they expect Missourians far from those playing fields to pay for.
So much for the stick and ball stuff. Motorsports is in some turmoil as this article goes to press this week.
(NASCAR)—Is he in or is he out? The answer for Alex Bowman is “out.” How can a car pass a technical inspection before a race and then lose so much weight during the race that it is ruled out of the playoffs after apparently making it to the semi-final round of eight?
It’s because Bowman’s car DID lose weight during the race. Bowman was running 18th at the end of the race and would have been among the eight remaining drivers for the next three races before a final four drivers are decided. But the disqualification of his car cost him 28 standing points and dropped him from sixth to ninth in the standings. Some of the points had been given him as the winner of the second stage of the race. His demotion to last place, officially, means the stage winner was A. J. Almendinger, who is 46th in overall points.
A dash cam video from a competitor’s car saw Bowman’s car hitting a curb on the infield section of the Charlotte Roval, and a piece of the car’s underbelly flew off. The piece appeared to be a rub block, a piece of hard rubber on the underside of the car that keeps the underbelly from hitting the pavement when the car becomes briefly airborne.
After reviewing events of the race, Hendrick Motorsports announced yesterday that it would not appeal the ruling.
Bowman’s disqualification puts two-time Cup champion Joey Logano back in the playoffs by four points. Dropping out besides Bowman are Austin Cindric, Ty Gibbs, and Chase Briscoe.
Kyle Larson’s sixth victory of the year puts him back in the points lead by twenty points over Christopher Bell. They are trailed by Tyler Reddick, whose car was damaged in an early race crash that left him 26th in the late stages and below the cut line. Reddick ran a relentless final stage of the race and finished high enough to make the round of eight by three points over Logano. The Bowman disqualification and Reddick’s run left Reddick third in the points standings heading to Vegas. He is trailed by William Byron, defending champion Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, and Logano. Elliott won the championship in 2020. Logano was the series champion in 2018 and 2022. Larson got the Cup in 2021. Hamlin has made the final four four times without winning a championship and is spoken of as a latter-day Mark Martin who finished second in the standings five times but never won the big trophy.
The next round of races that will see the field cut from eight to four begins next Sunday at Las Vegas.
(INDYCAR)—The season is over but preparations for 2025 put eleven drivers back at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for more testing of the hybrid powerplant the teams used for the second half of the season. Each team in IndyCar was represented by one of its drivers.
Series champion Alex Palou had the hot lap at 224.342 mph, slightly faster than defending Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden’s 223.973.
IndyCar returns March 2nd at St. Petersburg, Florida, a street race.