(MIZ)—We’d buy a ticket, if the University of Missouri didn’t require a second mortgage on our home to buy one AND to park somewhere in Boone County, to see Missouri’s Caleb Grill and the WNBA’s Katlin Clark have a three-point shootout from near-center court.
Grill’s latest three-pointer blitz was a major factor in Missouri’s impressive win Saturday against another top-15 club. But it wasn’t just his long-range shooting that led Missouri to crush a team by 27 points that was ranked seven slots higher in the rankings. The Tigers defense was impressive against Mississippi State and Missouri rebounding has made us almost forget last year’s regrettable rebound record.
This was a landmark win. No Missouri men’s basketball team in the entire history of MU roundball had beaten a ranked team on the road by 27 of more points. Ever. It was Misosur9’s fourth top-25 win of the year, the second top-15 road game win.
Missouri posted a season-high 15 three=pointers.
The win has boosted Missouri not the teens in the rankings—16th in the coaches poll and 15th in the sportswriters poll—the highest ratings for a Tiger eam since February 8, 2021.
It’s February now. Only eight regular season games are left. Missouri is seventh in conference power rankings, third in the overall standings and is considered “the league’s biggest surprise.” The Tigers are 17-4 overall and face fifth-rated Tennessee tomorrow night. That game also is on the road. . (ZOU)
(CHIEFS)—We were sorting though some stuff the other day and came across what we first thought was an old handball. But nobody in our family ever played handball. But one bounce confirmed the second thought; it was a Super Ball, a popular plaything in the mid to late 60s.
Why mention it here?
Because it is part of the big game next Sunday.
Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt had seen some kids playing with the “mystery ball with 1,000 bounces” and his mind quickly moved Super Ball to “Super Bowl.” His Chiefs were playing the Packers in what was termed the “AFL-NFL Championship Game,” and sometimes referred to as the “World Series of Football.” But Hunt’s nick name for the game caught on so quickly that NFL Films’ coverage of the game (The Packers blew open the game in the second half to beat KC 35-10) called it the “Super Bowl.”
It became the official name of the game for Super Bowl III, when the Jets became the first AFL team to win.
The odds makers say this could be a super game. The Chiefs have been listed in the early line as favored by half of a field goal.
(FASTBALLS AND FAST CARS)
Two sports are starting to rev up now that we’re in February.
By this time next week, pitchers and catchers will be pitching and catching in Florida and in Arizona.
(CARL/NASCAR)—Friday night, Columbia retired NASCAR driver Carl Edwards will be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Edwards drove his last race in 2016 although he didn’t know it was his final race at the time. He was headed for his first Cup championship with ten laps to go in the last race of the year when he tried to block challenger Joey Logano from going beneath him. His left rear fender hit the nose of Logano’s car and Edward’s car crashed hard into the infield wall.
Carl Edwards HUGE CRASH Final round 2016 Nascar Sprint Cup series
The NASCAR world was stunned when Edwards abruptly walked away. Last year he was named one of the 75 greatest drivers in NASCAR’s 75-year history.
Edwards cut his teeth on the local tracks in Central Missouri and was the track champion at the now-gone Capital Speedway in Jefferson City. He finally drew the attention of NASCAR team owner Jack Roush who put him in some NASCAR truck series races in which he finished in the top ten in 35 of his sixty races, with six wins.
In his 13-year career he won 28 Cup of 445 races, was in the top five 124 times and in the top ten 220 times. In his last year his average starting position through 36 races was 7.2. He finished second in the standings twice including one year when he and Tony Stewart finished tied in points but Stewart took home the trophy because he won more races.
For ten years, eight of them with full-time rides, he ran in the top feeder series for the Cup program, racing on Saturday before the Cup races on Sundays, posting 38 wins in 245 starts and finishing outside the top ten only 71 times. He won what was then the Busch Series championship in 2007 and finished second in the standings four times and third once.
Edwards was known for his backflips from his car when he won. He was a prominent image in NASCAR marketing, and was considered a likely race winner every time he buckled into his seat.
Then he left after the final race and what became a career-ending crash. He has seldom been seen at the track since although he admits a pull back to the sport, not as a driver but as a respected retiree.
We confess, we miss him and looking at the picture above, taken while he was in the pits at Indianapolis, reminds us what a pleasure it was to watch him race—and to talk with him. When we talked the last time, he admitted privately that he was considering what he should do for the second half of his life. I couldn’t tell him what he should do but we did discuss what he shouldn’t do, and he didn’t. And whether that conversation influenced his decision is not material. But it was nice of hm to ask.
Carl told an interviewer last year after learning he’d been elected to the Hall of Fame, “I just needed time. I woke up…and I realized I’m not spending time doing anything other than racing and that’s time I would never get back.” He also felt he had done everything he wanted to do in NASCAR racing and, “I understood that I was the best that I could be…I escaped without any injuries” of the kind of concussion problems Dale Earnhardt Jr., had worked through.
He admits it took “a couple of years” to adjust to non-racing life, “to get a balance,” as he put it. But 2016 was the first time, he said, that he “ looked around and thought, ‘there are some other things that I really need to tend to. My family, nobody else is going to take my role there,” so he had to make the clean break he did.
Carl Edwards Talks Hall of Fame, NASCAR Exit: “How I Left Was Misunderstood…”
He has no desire to climb back into a Cup car again. He’s 45, a little grey at the temples now, comfortable with his life-decision, and knows the sport has moved beyond him—although he confesses he has been on a simulator a few times.
He still lives in Columbia, travels a lot, and says he keeps busy with a lot of things. And he’s a good guy.
Next week in this space we’ll be telling you about NASCAR’s opening race, the Daytona 500.
(Screenshot from his interview; photo by Bob Priddy at Brickyard 400, 2014)