Photo via Missourian

Well, the first game of the year is done, and the Tigers ended up on the good side of an 83-68, 15 point win. There were some bright spots, and there are some things to work on.

Good

-As True Son said on the Mizzourah Twitter page, Laurence Bowers may have a higher ceiling than DeMarre, which is big to say considering JYD was a 1st rounder. Bowers was a beast Tuesday night 16pts, 8 boards, 3 assists, and four huge blocks. His block into souvenir land was epic. Keith Ramsey also had a big game with 15-7-2, including another block.

-A 50 point first half. The Skyhawks were winded early, but hung in.

-18 offensive rebounds.

-Big time, deep bench.

-My mid-week Victory Whiskey is back. Ok, just now I have an excuse.

Bad

-Lots of turnovers (21)

-JT Tiller's bum wheel.

-Giving up 30 points to UT-M's Benzor Simmons at guard.

-Not closing. The Tigers could have easily won by 30, not 15.

-Missed and lazy passing.

Indifferent

-That 50 point first half in the first game of the year. No first game jitters.

-Lame crowd on a bad weather night. What did RMN throw out? A little less than 7k? Gotta improve.

And as a total win, ATDHE.net had a very smooth, free stream of the Mizzou All Access video. That should mean that every Mizzou All Access game should be on ATDHE, so bookmark that thing ASAP.

From ex-kU'er Joc Crawford's Twitter account. He appears to be fairly happy with what's going on with Mangino over in Larryville. Actually, as happy as a pit bull on a poodle's ass. (In no specific order)

As always, suggestions and beatdown threats are always accepted.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama
2	Texas
3	TCU	2
4	Florida	1
5	Boise State	1
6	Cincinnati
7	Georgia Tech
8	Pittsburgh
9	Ohio State
10	LSU	1
11	Oregon	2
12	Oklahoma State	4
13	Penn State	6
14	Stanford	8
15	Washington
16	Brigham Young	7
17	Clemson	7
18	Iowa	3
19	Wisconsin	2
20	Miami (Florida)	8
21	Oregon State
22	Oklahoma
23	Southern Cal	13
24	Utah	7
25	Temple
Last week's ballot

Of course, according to BetUS.com.

Missouri senior WR Jared Perry will miss the remainder of the regular season with a fracture of his right tibia, what’s medically known more precisely as the tibial plateau. Perry was hurt in the second quarter at K-State. There is still hope from Mizzou that Perry could return to play in a bowl game, depending on the timeframe of the potential bowl game.

Via Missourinet.com. Hopefully, JP makes it back for a bowl game. Otherwise this is a very disappointing end to what was easily Perry's best season. If you want to look on the bright side, this will force one of the underclassmen receivers to step up in JP's absence and will hopefully give someone some valuable experience going into next season.

You hate this for Perry, though. I know his drops have caused a lot of frustration for many Tiger fans. But when you examine his entire body of work, Perry's had a damn fine career as a Tiger.

This might actually double as both the funniest item and worst deal currently on eBay. For $5.75 (plus $3.25 shipping) you can be the not so proud owner of this 2009 "History Awaits" kU football poster.

I hate to tell blindjoe62 (who is the seller of the item) but Fraud Reesing himself wouldn't drop $9 on this piece of crap. (And yes, I'm officially changing Reesing's nickname from "Sod" to "Fraud.") Nothing says you're making history quite like a likely five-win season including huge (HUGE!) victories over football powerhouses like Duke, UTEP and Northern Colorado.

The 2007 co-captain, one of the decade’s most beloved MU players by teammates, coaches and fans, addressed Pinkel’s reeling team after practice.

Nose tackle Jaron Baston, who considers Williams his mentor, called the former Tiger “one of the greatest leaders who ever played at Mizzou.”

“Whenever a guy like Lorenzo comes and talks to you, you know it’s nut-cutting time,” linebacker Sean Weatherspoon said. “He talked about young guys stepping up. He talked about older guys and doing things the way they should because it’s their last year. … It motivated us. We were ready to play this game on Thursday after we talked to Zo.”

The heart of Williams’ message, Baston said, went like this: “As an individual, you can get beat. It don’t matter if you’re Sean Weatherspoon or Danario Alexander … if you play alone you can get beat by anybody. But together, as a whole team, as a Tiger family, nobody can beat you. Nobody can compete with you.”

As Spoon and Baston recalled, Williams’ speech touched on something Pinkel had been trying to relay to his young team for weeks but hadn’t found a way to deliver it. Big picture stuff. Big picture stuff that went beyond winning the North Division, beyond beating K-State or Bill Snyder and beyond the rebuilding vs. reloading stigma.

“We’re trying to preserve what we’re trying to create here: Excellence,” Pinkel said. “To me, this is a step to preserving what we’ve built here. We’re building a tradition here at Missouri. … That, to me, is bigger than anything. And I stuck that in my players’ face.”

“We were playing for all those guys when Mizzou wasn’t even heard of,” Baston said.

Among them was current Missouri grad assistant Brandon Barnes, a former wideout, safety and linebacker who played for the Tigers from 2000-03. In 1999, during his redshirt year, MU was bludgeoned 66-0 in Manhattan. Barnes, who helps coach MU’s receivers, found Weatherspoon on the field after Saturday’s win.

Said Spoon: “He came up to me personally, and said, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ ” “Doing it for your brothers,” Spoon explained as MU’s newfound mission statement.

“Do it for everyone who’s put on these uniforms, put on these helmets, been through the locker rooms we’ve been through. It’s all about us. It’s all about Mizzou.”

Dave Matter on Zo Williams get-your-asses-in-gear speech that he delivered to the team earlier in the week. Cue the goosebumps.

Also, no word on how many walls Zo damaged/obliterated during the speech but Vegas has the over/under set at four.

Big bounceback victory for the Tigers on Saturday. Say what you will about Gary Pinkel and his coaching staff, but Mizzou always seems to respond after seemingly hitting rock bottom. (See the victories over Colorado in ’08, Texas Tech in ’07 and kU in ’06.) It’s hard to overvalue how critical it is for a coach to be able to keep his team from falling apart after a disheartening loss.

I had to follow most of the game on my Blackberry so I didn’t get a great feel for what went down but here are my impressions after reading over the box score and several of the game stories:

-Not sure what more I can say about Danario Alexander. I’ve read multiple reporters compare him to Randy Moss and that’s not that crazy if you’ve seen some of the plays he’s made. I wrote during the Nevada game that it looked like ‘Nario might be making The Leap and he’s obviously made it. He’s the receiver we always wanted him to become.

To get an idea just how good he’s been check out his numbers from the last three games: 31 receptions, 537 yards and seven touchdowns. That’s a pretty decent season. And not that it really needs to be said, but Danario Alexander >>> Dez Briscoe. I’m just sayin’.

-On that same note, how stupid does it make the NCAA look when Danario can’t even be considered for the Bilentnikoff even though three of the 10 finalists aren’t even playing football right now? Who seriously thought it was a good idea to narrow down the finalists three games into the conference season? There is something you can do about this, though. You can either call or e-mail Steve Winn who is listed as the contact for information regarding the award. Here’s his info: 850-878-3056, e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

-I’m seeing a lot of comparisons between ‘Nario and J-Mac and I think it’s interesting. If we’re talking about who is the more dangerous pass catcher then the edge goes to Alexander. If you were building a WR from scratch you would give him ‘Nario’s body and skills. That said, Maclin was a more valuable weapon. You may not be able to stop Danario but you at least know what to expect. That wasn’t the case with Maclin.

-All of a sudden Blaine Gabbert looks like he’s the best underclassman QB in the Big 12 (something we’ve maintained that he is all season long). Actually, forget best underclassmen QBs, he’s one of the top quarterbacks in the conference this year. Yeah, I went there. He’s got more TD passes than Colt McCoy, Fraud Reesing and Zac Robinson so it’s not at all a stretch to say that. But remember what this column told us, Blaine’s not anything like his predecessors.

-Like I said, I didn’t get to watch the game so I really have no idea how effective the rushing attack was but the numbers look good. I’ll just leave it at that. -Looked like a solid performance by the defense. Dominant against the run and solid against the pass. Hopefully that means the secondary made some major strides last week in practice.

-Only downside of the weekend was getting knocked out of the North race. I think my buddy Max said it best: “Two things you can’t do: count on kansas, and put yourself in position to have to count on kansas.” That pretty much sums it up.

(Side note: Nebraska winning the North actually puts Mizzou in a position to go to a better bowl. So are you cheering for the Nubs or are you OK with going to a slightly better bowl if it means not having to listen to that Husker "RETURN TO GLORY!!!!!!11!!!!!" bullshit for the next seven months?)

But really, I’m not that upset about it. It would have taken a massive collapse by the Longhorns to give Mizzou a real chance. I’m all for maintaining division supremacy but this season really stopped being primarily about winning the North a while ago. It’s about keeping things moving in a positive direction and setting things up so the Tigers can really compete for a Big 12 title the next two years when they’ll have much more experience.

And winning these two remaining regular season games would do just that.