That experience Mauk got last season sure seems like a good thing now. Wish DGB were still here. I'm ready for football season.

South Carolina seems like a team that has our number. They terrify me. SEC road games are always going to be tough. Hopefully Muschamp completes his destruction of Florida, but a win will be a tall order there.

Unfortunately, we lost our four best skill position players. We went from having the best WRs in the country to a nondescript group. Losing 21 sacks from our ends and the best CB of our lifetimes doesn't help either.

This will be a tougher year than we think. The 2012 and 2013 classes were baaaaad, and those deficiencies will be further magnified as they become upper classmen.

Eight wins is probably a fair expectation. Anything more than that is gravy.

no more conner shaw

that guy had mizzou's number

As long as Spurrier is there they will be tough to beat.

No doubt. We owe 'em one though. I'd love to get some payback.

This is pretty cool.

How the University of Missouri Football Program Became an NFL Pipeline

http://www.stack.com/2014/05/16/miss...ining-program/

Sure wish DGB was there to catch some Mauk bombs.

Don't remind me. :banghead:

I normally could care less about womens softball but the other night a few of their players got interviewed before the Kansas game and the Big 12 network people just picked them apart, they were brutal telling the girls to "Shut up and win something." They beat KU but got swept by the Lady Huskers yesterday. Kind of sucks to satisfy those pricks so quickly.

Mauk, Boehm give Mizzou heart, laughs

http://espn.go.com/blog/ncfnation/po...u-heart-laughs

The best leaders know exactly what their team needs at the precise moment it needs it. Sometimes it's encouragement, sometimes it's a kick in the pants, and sometimes it's a good laugh.

Maty Mauk and Evan Boehm, two of the Missouri Tigers' emerging leaders, are experts in the latter. They can give rah-rah speeches and holler with the best of coaches, but where they really shine is in lightening the mood.

"The relationship that we have is pretty unique," Mauk says with a laugh. "I don't really know how to describe it."

Before they arrived at Missouri as classmates in the summer of 2012, they already knew they would be close friends. Boehm heard about Mauk's exploits as a record-setting prep quarterback and reached out on Facebook and with emails and text messages.

With both being sons of high school coaches, they connected on subjects great and small -- their enthusiasm for Mizzou, expectations of college life, the weight of being two of the Tigers’ top prospects.

Once on campus, their fun-loving personalities meshed further, as Mauk and Boehm discovered they were kindred spirits who could talk about football and life deep into the night.

"It's that quarterback-center relationship you try to find," said Boehm, who started at guard as a true freshman while Mauk redshirted.

"The relationship we've had since Day 1 has been a special relationship, because I ultimately knew that I wanted to move to center and snap the ball to him."

Boehm did move to center last fall, and Mauk became the Tigers' backup QB. As their roles on the team grew, so did their friendship and their antics on the field.

At first there were curious glances and puzzled looks, but soon coaches and teammates knew the deal. Mauk and Boehm were a couple of cutups who were starting to work their goofiness into the culture of the Tigers' locker room.

"We're going to come out [to practice] and people are going to think, 'Hey, they're messing around,'" Mauk said. "But that's just how we communicate. We know each other and we know football. So we're always finding something that we think will help us get better."

One of their favorite rituals started last season just before walkthroughs.

"I take the shotgun snap from Maty and then we both grab a ball and we start throwing it at the goalpost to see who can hit it first," Boehm said. "It's a little friendly competition but it's a tradition that we started last year, a tradition that we kept in spring ball. It's just a lot of fun.

"At first the coaches really didn't understand what we were doing. But once they realized the type of relationship that me and Maty had -- we always laugh and we always smile. They didn't understand it at first, but now they kind of do. And they're letting it go and they're letting it slide as long as we're getting the job done, too."

Mauk and Boehm helped the Tigers get a lot done in 2013, namely winning the SEC East and finishing with a No. 5 ranking in the final polls.

Now Missouri's starting quarterback and his anchor on the offensive line have their sights set on lifting the program -- and each other -- even higher in 2014.

Boehm's goal is to be the top center in the SEC if not the nation. Mauk is his biggest fan.

"He's really progressed since last year, just over the year," Mauk said. "I'm really excited for him to do these big things he's about to do."

Boehm likewise believes Mauk is just scratching the surface of his talent.

"The kid has matured 100 percent for the better since he's gotten here," Boehm said. "The kid is still growing as a person. You can tell that he realizes that this is his team now."

They both do. It's their time to step forward and their time to say the right thing at just the right time.

"Being a coach's kid you have to be that leader on and off the field," Boehm said. "Maty and I, we're taking that role right now. We respect the seniors and everything they have to say, but at the same time you can never have enough leaders out on that field."

That was a classic team of Missouri underachievers. Up 4-0 with two outs in the last inning against Bradley and they give up six straight baserunners and five runs to fall down 5-4. They actually ended up tying the game and winning in extras, but it was vastly inferior competition.

They were up 6-1 against Kansas and again nearly crapped away a lead the next day, then managed to lose two straight to Nebraska. I believe that of the teams that were in their position in the last three years (needing one win to secure the regional while the other needed two), 45/48 had ended up winning the regional. Even worse, they did it at home.

They get hyped a fair amount by the local Tiger radio station, but they step on their clits every year.

Even Chelsea Thomas would choke, she would pitch a dandy all game and then completely blow it in the ninth when it mattered most. They have that Mizzou blood pumping in the females too. lol

I pay very little attention to softball (because it's kind of a b.s. sport), but they were without their best pitcher for this regional and also lost Thomas to injury at least 2 of her years, according to something I read on PowerMizzou.

Of the programs at Mizzou, softball seems to shit the bed the least. Six straight super regionals before this year, 3 straight WS appearances leading up to that.

It's true they lost their best pitcher to a thumb injury, but that Nebraska team was pretty meh. What always kills Mizzou is that their bats often disappear.

On a related note, any heat on Jamieson's worthless ass after going 6-21 in conference?