Read the full transcript of Mizzou beat writer Eli Hoff's sports chat
Bring your Tigers football, basketball and recruiting questions, and talk to Eli Hoff in a live chat at 11 a.m. Thursday.
Eli Hoff: Hi all! Thanks for coming by this week's Mizzou chat. I'll be on here for the next few hours to answer your questions and takes. We've got football, basketball and a whole lot to talk about — so let's get to it.
Larry M: Watching the first game of WBB shows that it is business as usual with Pingeton coaching. No defense, no ball security, etc. When do they start contacting potential hires for replacement. Shouldn't Kelley Harper (fired UT coach) be at the top of the list.
Hoff: Yeah, not a great start to the year on the women's basketball front — Mizzou lost 62-46 to Vermont on Monday. It was on the road, but that shouldn't matter. No SEC team should be getting outscored by double-digits to Vermont, and 46 points is not a competitive offensive showing. I can't say it bodes well for what the rest of this year will be.
I'm not sure what the timeline will be on hiring Pingeton's replacement. Her contract is up in April, once the full postseason has run its course. But that doesn't mean that there won't be other coaches out of jobs before then, or that Missouri can't have some sort of plan. Kellie Harper would be a great candidate for the list — she has SEC experience at Tennessee and in MO with a stint at Missouri State. Now, is MU willing to invest at a level that would give her resources comparable to what she had at Tennessee? That I'm not so sure of, and might be a factor in whether she'd even be interested.
Russ: Eli, is the soft early schedule this year for MMB a reflection of last year? Last year they had Pittsburgh and Minnesota early in the schedule. Did soften the schedule to give this team some time to come together?
Hoff: At some level, I think so. This is a noncon slate much more similar to Gates' first season than last year. Though one note on the Pitt game: That was part of the SEC-ACC challenge, which is still around this year. Missouri just has a home game against Cal this time around.
I think you can see the logic of this season's set-up pretty clearly, though. The Memphis game was the "barometer," as Gates called it. It was competitive and against a meaningful opponent, so now this staff has both a baseline and some priorities. They won't play another meaningful opponent until December, so that's a lot of time to implement things, make the mistakes that are part of the process and still win games. Then it's Cal, KU and Illinois: three more tests. There are still some buy games mixed into December too for chances to refine things. Then comes SEC play, when this really has to get into gear.
There's a lot of time for quiet development before this team ought to be really tested again. I can see how that's helpful for a program integrating so many newcomers. And maybe it's a byproduct of that, too. There's so little carryover from last season that this team needs time to get the foundation in place.
Evil Calvin: Can we possible list this season as one of the greatest disappointments in Mizzou recent history....based on expectations, soft schedule, talent level on the team, 5 year coach, 5 year QB......then injuries and blowout losses
Hoff: As I've mentioned before in these chats, I didn't grow up watching Missouri football, so I don't have distinct memories of what the 2008 season was like, for example. Hence why I defer to y'all on putting that kind of frame around this season. But I imagine it has to be up there with 2008, right? A legit path to national relevance/contention, talent, the schedule, the excitement of what the previous season had been — the ingredients are all very similar in my eyes.
Florida ObiWan: Eli, at some point will it benefit the football team to atleast play 1 big name school to get them ready for the SEC schedule? Seems like playing cream puffs isn't getting them prepped and toughened up to meet this schedule. I'm not saying play 2 or 3 of the big schools but playing Buffalo, UMass, etc isn't helping to bring out some of the problems that they will see so they can fix them before the regular season. Such as depth charts. I think the soft schedule over the years is hurting the program. Play like a Miami, Michigan, Clemson so to speak. Thanks for the chat
Hoff: It's tough because I see both sides of the logic with scheduling. But first: Mizzou will continue to do this. They have to play at least one other Power Four program in nonconference play — this year that was Boston College. Next year, it'll be Kansas. In 2026, both Kansas and Illinois. Those games are already on the books.
But with your core question: There's definitely some value in playing another marquee game to be more prepared for higher quality opponents. Murray State and UMass don't show anything that will test a team like even the worst SEC program will. At the same time, though, not losing games really, really matters. Especially early in the season. The path to the CFP for an SEC program is finishing 10-2, more or less. If one of those losses comes in noncon, that requires a 7-1 performance in conference play, which is really tough to do.
Texas A&M is the perfect example of this. The Aggies played Notre Dame in what I feel like was the nation's biggest opening week game. They lost but were winning elsewhere — though the margins for making the playoff remained incredible thin. Now that A&M has lost to South Carolina, it probably needs to win out to get into the CFP, which requires beating Texas. Whereas if the Aggies had played a beatable power conference team — say Boston College — their playoff chances look quite different. It's a game of hypotheticals at that point, but Texas A&M shows what the risk is.
Obviously the 12-team CFP is a big focus right now with scheduling strength and such, but I think the bigger factor is actually going to be revenue. Entering the revenue-sharing era, athletic departments are going to need every dollar they can get out of their football programs. This was part of Laird Veatch's point in why Mizzou will be raising ticket prices starting next year.
So to maximize football revenue as an athletic department, you (at a basic level) need as many tickets sold as possible. The best way to do that is by having as many home games as possible. So getting all four nonconference games at home is going to be a big deal for athletic departments, when they can. That probably leans scheduling smaller schools that are happy to go on the road for a fee, versus bigger ones. The counter, though, is that selling out a stadium against a big team is more valuable than not selling out a stadium versus a small team, which leans toward building a stronger schedule.
I'll probably write about this more once the regular season wraps up because it has implications for both playoff chances and the athletics department's bottom line — it just takes time for conversations with folks that isn't there during the season. There's really intriguing reasoning for being on both sides, in my opinion.
bigron: Hello Eli, I was somewhat impressed with the MBB first half against Memphis, but the second half was somewhat of a disaster. Wondering why coach Gates has so many men on the team. To me it seems rather cumbersome having so many players trying to get playing time. Couldn't understand why Pierce didn't get in the game right at the start of the 2nd half
Hoff: You'll be hard pressed to find a game that can be more accurately described as a tale of two halves. Dennis Gates did explain afterward that he didn't get Trent Pierce and Aidan Shaw (who both had excellent first halves) in as much during the second because he needed to prioritize ball-handling to combat the full-court pressure Memphis was deploying to great effect. You can disagree with his line of thinking there, but that's what it was.
In general, Gates wants big rosters to allow for larger rotations and for players to be going all-out when on the floor and not conserving energy for stamina's sake. But the rotation wasn't all that extensive against Memphis, which surprised me. After some of the injuries that impacted last season's team, he also wanted plain and simple depth this time around.
The challenge is going to be finding consistency. Which of the primary options for the 2 and 3 spots — Tamar Bates, Caleb Grill, Marques Warrick, Annor Boateng — will be knocking down shots and making plays night in and night out? It's great to have options, but tough if it's like whack-a-mole in terms of whose shot is clicking during a given game. College basketball games aren't long enough for a coach to experiment with a whole cast before settling on a refined few. The season is, so that approach would make sense over the next month or so, but part of the process is going to be figuring out who the core pieces are. Ideally, the competition that will take place will make those core pieces better when they emerge. But if nobody emerges, it's not especially productive.
Evil Calvin: Another rainy home game this week with the 'less than stellar' Drew Pyne at QB. Do you think the turnout will be full?
Hoff: It'll test fans. I haven't looked closely enough at the forecast to see if the rain will be clearing out before kickoff, but it seems like there's at least potential for some dreary weather. And yes, there's also potential that Drew Pyne is Mizzou's quarterback. Regardless of either, this game isn't the battle of heavyweights we'd thought it might be a few months ago.
I still think it matters more than the typical game, though, and tickets sold out. People already have them, so it's a matter of whether or not they show up — not whether or not they buy them. I'd imagine most people still do. If I buy tickets to a sporting event, that means I'm planning on going. I think most fans operate that way. But if Faurot doesn't look full, that'll be indicative of something.
And if it is full, that also shows something about this fan base. Eli Drinkwitz issued a challenge to Mizzou fans at the start of this season, asking them to show up. Y'all have. And it's the team that, at times, hasn't. If every seat is still full for this game but the Tigers fall flat, I think there will be a lot of frustration from folks in the crowd.
Ed from Idaho: Greetings from Idaho! I continue to be impressed by your in depth reporting on FB and BB. You sure see more details than I do. Two questions: has there been an update on the health of Cook and Noel? I thought coaches are required to give an injury report on Wednesdays. Second, did Gates get out-coached in the second half Monday.
Hoff: Thanks for the kind words, Ed! The only update on Cook and Noel was that they're both questionable for the game, which is not surprising. I'll write an injury update once things become a little more concrete on the back end of this week's game prep.
You could argue Gates was out-coached. Memphis adapted to press more and Mizzou either wasn't prepared for that or didn't have an answer. In that sense, Penny Hardaway got one over on Gates. Now, to be fair, Mizzou's zone defense threw Memphis for a loop in the first half, so Gates had the better coaching performance there. But it was the second half that lost MU the game...
-
-
-
-
-
Mizzou beat writer
