Join Mizzou beat writer Dave Matter for his live chat at 11 a.m. Thursday
Bring your Tigers football, basketball and recruiting questions, and talk to Dave Matter in a live chat at 11 a.m. Thursday.
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I was hoping to hear more positive news about the QB situation, especially concerning Horn. I know he's been hampered this spring with an injury. But, he just hasn't seemed to create much "buzz" since his arrival on campus.
Was I expecting too much or has he been at least a slight disappointment thus far? -
Since Horn arrived on campus last summer, MU has opened just one practice featuring team drills where reporters have been able to watch Horn throw against the defense - and most of the media were in Sacramento for that practice. So I wouldn't be too concerned about the lack of buzz. I wasn't at the final spring scrimmage but was told his arm has looked really good since he recovered from the forearm pain. He certainly looks the part of an SEC quarterback - but he'll have to earn the job by moving the chains, protecting the ball, making great decisions and showing he's a leader. -
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Adding more quality bigs can't hurt the rebounding. I'm not sure if they'll completely retool their defensive style just to improve rebounding. Their wings didn't rebound all that well, other than Gomillion. Kobe's rebounding numbers slipped some this year. Carter can and should be a decent rebounder all the time. Shaw has the most upside as a rebounder, but they need to lock him in the weight room this spring and summer.
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Mizzou returned to the Big 12 two years ago. The SEC doesn't have other wrestling schools.
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It appears Pingeton has made a real mess of roster compensation. She has two Linthacum sisters that need to go to open up space for better players, but has a third sister coming in next season. How do you say goodbye to the oldest two while keeping the young one? Frankly, i don't think any of the three can contribute at this level.
Thoughts? -
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the Linthacum sisters' ability, but Robin has one year to make the NCAA Tournament and save her job. One scholarship opened yesterday when Lauren Hansen entered the portal. She's got four freshmen joining the team this summer. I believe at least one other roster spot could open with a medical retirement. She wants to add size to the roster to supplement a core of Frank, Judd, Kelly, Kroenke, Smith, plus the two four-star freshmen.
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I was off the grid for a few days when there were reports that Drinkwitz is hiring former U of Houston O-line coach Brandon Jones. The school hasn't confirmed anything yet. Drinkwitz is on vacation this week, so not sure when MU will officially announce a hire. Under Jones’ watch, five different Houston O-linemen earned All-American Athletic Conference honors, including guard Cam’Ron Johnson this past season. Johnson is in the portal and on March 10 announced he’d received a scholarship offer from Mizzou. Maybe he'd follow his former position coach to Mizzou. Can he play center? The offense might need a center more than a guard at this point.
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He was the only freshman on a team with 23- and 24-year-olds, so I'm not sure it was ever realistic to expect him to be a major contributor. His offensive game was basically limited to lobs and put-backs. He can hit the occasional 3, but it's not like they're drawing up plays for him to get looks on the perimeter. He's got to get stronger to be able to play heavy minutes inside at this level. He's 6-9 and played under 200 pounds this year.
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With Kansas and Illinois locked into the schedule, I doubt you'll see a lot more high-majors on the slate, but what Mizzou should avoid is scheduling low majors that are in the 300s in the NET/KenPom rankings. Those games, against the likes of Lindenwood, Mississippi Valley State and Houston Christian, are the games that really drag down your strength of schedule.
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Mizzou Baseball won two midweek games after a couple of heartbreaking losses at South Carolina. Bieser has lost NINE of his 17 pitchers on the roster to injury and only has eight healthy picthers left to get through the rest of the season. Outfielder Ty Wilmsmeyer had to pitch the last 5 innings of relief in the 12 inning loss to the Gamecocks in the last game of the weekend series, HOW can Bieser navigate the rest of the way with only eight pitchers? Have you ever seen such bad luck? Dave Matter of Power Mizzou seems to think we have a great chance of landing the 7'5" shot blocking extraordinaire Jamarion Sharp (portal entry from Western Kentucky),,,and Caleb Love (from CBC and portal entry from UNC). What are you hearing? Would adding those two make is a legit Final Four contender?
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Dave Matter of PowerMizzou? I know I took a couple days off this week but wasn't aware I changed jobs.Tough stretch for Bieser's bullpen. Not sure what he can do to fix it at this stage of the season. He'll have to be extra careful with innings.As for the potential transfers, Sharp was really close to coming to Mizzou last year. Smithpeters was his junior college coach and they are very close. If he indeed transfers, I would expect Mizzou to be in the mix.Caleb Love is probably the most accomplished player in the portal. UNC had a rough year and his shooting percentages really fell off. But his brilliant run in the 2022 NCAA Tournament still very much happened - and there aren't many 17-point-a-night high-major guards available on the market. If Gates can turn Kobe Brown from a 20% 3-point shooter to a 45% shooter, then he can probably fix whatever happened to Love this year.Mizzou was his other finalist nearly four years ago. MU will make another push, but I'd expect other major programs to recruit him. NIL will almost certainly be a factor. Proximity to home? Maybe.I'm not making any predictions. We'll see what happens and report what we can.As for being Final Four contenders, I'm not sure what that means any more. We've got Florida Atlantic, San Diego State and Miami in the Final Four this weekend. Were they F4 contenders when the season tipped off? Purdue, Kansas and Arizona were F4 contenders two weeks ago and look what happened. So, I wouldn't use the F4 as a benchmark for recruiting. Just try to put together the best team you can put together and then play the season.
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What about Garcia? He had more practice reps under Kirby Moore than any of the scholarship QBs on the roster. I couldn't see enough in the spring to have a great read on the situation. Like I've said all along, from Drinkwitz to Moore, from Garcia to Cook to Horn, it's in everyone's best interest to let them compete for the job when everyone's healthy so they can truly figure out who's the best option.FYI, Cook is spending spring break in Miami and flinging the football around, per his IG account.
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A follow-up question to my previous one about Drink's Coaching staff being down to 3 original members: You said in last week's chat that you think Johnson's moving on to Purdue might be for the best so as to have a fresh new OL Coach run things after the bad year that particular unit had last year. But, correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't it an unexpectedly injury-plagued year for the OL last season to the point Johnson had to move all kinds of players away from their natural positions and had no choice but to start some players--throw them into the fire, if you will--that he initially planned on using as mainly reserves for the season(example: Tollison). I realize that now more than ever we live in a What-Have-You-Done-For-Me-Lately society. And the reasons you said Johnson is moving on is I admit understandable. But I just find it aggravating that so many Mizzou fans seem to be glad he's gone now because of the bad OL play last year and seem to forget that they thought Johnson did a pretty solid job coaching good OL's in the seasons before last. Perhaps you could come up with some statistics to verify this? If not, no big deal and thank you for letting me speak my peace on this matter!
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There were some injuries last year. Hyrin White was hurt last year and his backup, Zeke Powell, was lost for the year with an injury at the Auburn game. Bence Polgar was ruled ineligible before camp but I'm not convinced he would have beaten out Connor Tollison for the center job.That said, I thought the O-line was the team's No. 1 weakness last year. Mizzou gave up the most tackles for loss in the SEC (101) and the most among all Power Five teams. The O-line was flagged for 38 penalties and allowed 64 quarterback hurries. They were better in 2021-22 with a better center, but as a whole, I thought the unit had a rough year overall.I'm not saying it's a good thing to lose your O-line coach in March, but I just don't see it as a crippling move that should cause serious concern.
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Some teams have been able to add walk-ons who are receiving good NIL deals in lieu of scholarships, but I don't envision current scholarship players agreeing to move to walk-on status so they can save their coaches a scholarship. The math could work, but I just don't think it's a precedent schools want to start for a sport like basketball where you're only carrying about 15 players.
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--A follow-up question to my one about Marcus Johnson earlier: just curious, who was the Mizzou OL Coach in 2012 when the OL had a horrible injury-ravaged season that year? Whomever it was, did he move on after that year, or did he stick around to coach the considerably improved OL in 2013?
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If Mizzou FB goes 7-5, do you think that will be enough for DRF and the Board to keep Drinkwitz around? What's his buyout after the season? Personally, I think 7 wins is right at that dividing line, depending on how the games go (i.e., is Mizzou competitive against TENN, UGA, LSU or getting blown out by 30 points). 8 wins and he's safe in my opinion.
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I would think a winning regular-season record is enough for Drinkwitz to come back for 2024. But the program will have to signal an upward trajectory.I think I've answered the buyout question each of the last few chats, so let's all copy and paste this: If Mizzou fires Drinkwitz, it would owe him 75% of what’s remaining on his contract — $6 million due within 30 days of his termination and the rest paid out over the life of the contract. So, if he's fired after 2023, MU owes him $6 million immediately, then 75% of what's left on his deal ($20.5) over four years, which would be $15,375,000 ... or about $3.8 million per year. But the new buyout is fully mitigated, meaning should Drinkwitz land a new job after getting fired, his buyout is offset dollar-for-dollar based on his new salary.
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Hello Dave ... I seem to recall you writing about Ryan Kalkbrenner during his senior year in high school. Please refresh my memory as to why Mizzou (and Cuonzo) didn't land this big kid, who has developed into a nice player, especially defensively, for Creighton. Was he not interested in MU, did Cuonzo not prioritize him, or ... ?
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What in the heck has gone wrong that you might be aware of with Softball this year?!? (Yes, I realize you had been very busy w Mizzou hoops to the point you probably couldn't pay too much attention to the Softball team thus far).
I have a suggestion for them: hire a sports psychologist who can hypnotize them into believing they can hit and score lots of runs against SEC competition--not just non-con competition where they've had very little trouble at all hitting and scoring runs AND getting big wins(at least a couple of wins that I can think of offhand were against ranked non-con teams)!
One more thing regarding the team: I'm certainly a sensible enough fan to know better than to question Larissa Anderson as head coach yet, but I feel it's always a concern when I notice any of my favorite teams in any sport on a gradual season-to-season downward trend; in the case of MU Softball right now, that would be hosting a Super-Regional 2 years ago before being eliminated one win short of making the Womens' College Softball World Series, to hosting a regional last year but being eliminated in that round, to being 1-8 in SEC Play thus far this season and in danger of being considered bad enough to not making the NCAA Tournament at all! -
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When Pressey was playing for Mizzou he was often referred to in newspaper articles as Phil "Flip" Pressey or Phil (Flip) Pressey. Do you know if he is still referred to as Phil (Flip) Pressey and when you interview him do you pronounce the word "parentheses", as in "I have a question for Phil Parentheses Flip Pressey"
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Dave Matter of PowerMizzou? I know I took a couple days off this week but wasn't aware I changed jobs.
SORRY, Dave! I get Dave Dearmond and Gabe Matter mixed up ;-) Your thoughts on Mizzou's Spring Football season. Things seemed pretty quiet and low key. I'm excited about the potential of our defense...but our offense seems to be an on-going puzzle to figure out. WHAT has to happen for our offense to be serviceable to go with what appears to be a potentailly very, very good defense? -
I really didn't see much spring football. I saw some stretching and some individual position drills but team drills weren't open to media when I was there.The line can't be a weakness. They can't give up so many stops in the backfield, have to cut down on the penalties. The offense needs explosive plays. Some coaches, Drinkwitz included, adhere to data that says the margin for explosive plays (producing them on offense, preventing them on defense) determines wins and losses at a higher rate than turnover ratio. They need receivers who can get open downfield, running backs who can make the first defender miss, quarterbacks who can push the ball vertically and a line that gives him time to make that possible.
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-Do you think at some point in the future, College Baseball will start doing the same thing that MLB is now doing with all the new changes/rules to help speed up the game? Just a quick add-on to this: I was at the Mizzou baseball game at Lindenwood University yesterday and really enjoyed it. Nice turnout by fellow Mizzou fans. I really hope this baseball team is good this year, the heartbreaking losses in the sweep at UofSC last weekend aside. I would make the trip to CoMo to catch some of their games if they are good.
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I don't know if there's as much of an appetite for rule changes in the NCAA as there were in MLB. The MLB rule changes were motivated by financial reasons: They want to increase TV ratings by making the games more exciting to watch. I don't know if college baseball TV ratings are something the NCAA cares about too much.
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Hey Dave, thanks for the chat. I'm a big Gates fan, but by far the most frustrating aspect of the season was the lack of rebounding. It felt like opponents were getting 2-3 shots per possession. I get that the very active defense that resulted in a lot of takeaways (great!), but a down-side is that defenders found themselves out of position to rebound. My question; in interviews or pressers has Gates ever specifically talked about this problem and what he's doing to fix it?
