Welcome to the Morning Commute
Today we’re talking about Luther Burden III. Because football is better in Chicago these days than in Columbia (unfortunately.)
It’s been a tough few weeks for the former Mizzou star in Chicago. He’s had a slow roll out under Ben Johnson and that was before a concussion knocked him out for the past few weeks. But our guy was back in action for the Bears on Sunday, where he played a season high 33 snaps and made a key catch on the Bears final drive that ultimately won them the game. After the game,
Burden’s QB gave him a bit of shine:
“When Lu gets the ball in his hands, and he’s one on one, he’s pretty dangerous,” Caleb Williams told Bears media.
If you google Burden at this point, you’re likely to be met with a wave of both fantasy articles and Bears fan sites crying to give him more of a chance to make an impact. The Bears offense is still finding its footing under Johnson, but they’re in the thick of the playoff race and Burden appears to be growing in Johnson’s favor. Let’s hope he can stay injury free and continue to make the same impact up north that he did here in Columbia (sorry all you other NFC North/Mizzou fans.)
Yesterday at Rock M and Rock M+
Drinkwitz compared this year’s A&M loss not to last season’s defeat to the Aggies in the postgame press conference, but instead to the team falling short late in the regular season against South Carolina. He expects to see a similar fight in this year’s team as they regroup and focus on their final three SEC games.
“We found a way to just keep fighting and believing,” he said about last year’s squad, “and that’s ultimately what we’re going to do. This team has a lot of strong leaders on it, and we’re not going out like that.”
I’ll tell you what, if Mizzou ends this season by sweeping Mississippi State, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, there are going to be a lot of happy Tiger fans.
- In which Matthew previews and Rory reviews Mizzou Hoops’ decisive win over Virginia Military Institute:
“I think we again, executed very well on what we were trying to do,” said Gates. They went to their zone and everything like that and he kind of opened up the middle for us. The free throw line extended and everything. And we just started cutting and just communicating on what we were doing.“
It’s nice to see the margins creep up to 30+ point wins after the first two unconvincing performances from the Tigers. Dennis seems to take time building up his squads, so hopefully their first test against Minnesota will benefit from some of those early stressors.
Tournament season began for No. 15-ranked Tiger Style at the Hearnes Center. Mizzou welcomed Little Rock, Purdue, Oklahoma and South Dakota State for the Tiger Style Invite. The win streak was kept alive as the host team won the invite for the fourth straight year, this time with a final score of 146.5 points.
It would be nice to see the Tigers get back into the upper echelon of the sport after last year’s uncharacteristically up-and-down performances.
- Over at Rock M+, we’ve got some lineup breakdowns from the first week of hoops, plenty of action on the VMI game thread and one decidedly lukewarm tip from yours truly re: Drinkwitz head coaching rumors.
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