For the first time under coach Robin Goodman, Mizzou tennis knows exactly what stands between it and the end of the season.
The Tigers released their 2027 spring schedule Monday, unveiling a 29-match slate that will take Missouri across the country, through a demanding Southeastern Conference schedule and, ultimately, back to Louisiana for the SEC Championship.
For a program entering a new era under Goodman, the schedule offers more than a collection of dates and opponents.
It provides the first real
roadmap for what this team will be asked to become.
Missouri will play 15 matches at home and face 15 SEC opponents throughout the spring. The Tigers will open the season Jan. 17 in Dallas against UT Arlington before taking on SMU the following day.
The schedule immediately forces Missouri to travel, compete and adjust.
A week later, the Tigers will make the trip west for one of the more recognizable nonconference matchups of the season: a Border War against Kansas on Jan. 24.
Then comes a quick turnaround.
Missouri returns home Jan. 25 to host South Dakota and Western Illinois before closing January with another road trip, this time to Lincoln to face Nebraska and Omaha.
The early portion of the schedule will give Goodman and his staff plenty of opportunities to learn what their roster looks like when matches begin to count.
That could be especially important for a team that has undergone significant changes since last season.
Goodman was hired in May after serving as an associate head coach at Tennessee and previously leading Pacific. His arrival brought a new coaching philosophy and an emphasis on building a strong team culture, while the roster itself has added several new pieces around returning sophomore Alex Ackman.
Now, the schedule gives that group a chance to test those ideas.
A February marathon
February will provide little time for the Tigers to settle in.
Missouri opens the month at home against Eastern Kentucky and North Texas on Feb. 6 before traveling to Wichita State two days later.
The Tigers then head to the Twin Cities on Feb. 12 to face Minnesota and Milwaukee.
Missouri finally closes its nonconference schedule at home Feb. 20 against Lindenwood and Arkansas State.
By the time the Tigers finish that stretch, the team will have already played matches across multiple states and against a wide variety of opponents.
That variety can matter.
A new coaching staff can spend the fall establishing expectations, experimenting with lineups and learning how players respond to different situations. The spring schedule removes some of that control.
Matches come quickly.
Travel becomes part of the equation.
Lineups have to adjust.
Players have to learn how to recover and prepare for the next opponent instead of dwelling on the previous one.
For Missouri, that preparation will become particularly important once February ends.
Because that’s when the schedule changes.
Welcome to the SEC
The Tigers begin their SEC schedule Feb. 28 against Vanderbilt at home.
Florida follows March 5, with Auburn coming to Columbia two days later.
Three consecutive home matches will give Missouri an opportunity to begin conference play in front of its home crowd, but the opponents provide an immediate challenge.
After that, the Tigers hit the road.
Arkansas awaits March 12, followed by Oklahoma on March 14.
Missouri then returns home for matches against Illinois State and Kentucky on March 19 before Tennessee comes to Columbia March 21.
The Tennessee matchup could carry an additional layer for Goodman, who spent time with the Volunteers before taking over at Missouri.
But the biggest challenge may be what comes immediately afterward.
Four consecutive road matches await.
Missouri travels to Texas A&M on March 25 and Texas on March 27 before heading east for South Carolina on April 2 and Georgia on April 4.
That stretch will test nearly every part of the Tigers’ development.
The travel alone will demand consistency.
The opponents will demand it, too.
And with the SEC schedule becoming the defining portion of the season, Missouri will need to maintain the habits Goodman and his staff have emphasized throughout the fall.
During practice, the Tigers have focused on energy, communication, competition and building consistent habits from one day to the next.
Those concepts are easy to discuss during practice.
They become much harder to maintain when a team is playing its third or fourth match in a week, traveling between states and facing some of the country’s best competition.
That’s where the spring schedule becomes more than a schedule.
It becomes the biggest test.
The final homestand
After the four-match road trip, Missouri gets one final opportunity to defend home court.
The Tigers host Alabama on April 9, Mississippi State on April 11 and Ole Miss on April 16.
Three home matches across eight days will close Missouri’s regular-season home schedule.
Then comes one final road match.
Missouri travels to Baton Rouge on April 18 to face LSU in the regular-season finale.
Two days later, the Tigers will return to Louisiana.
This time, the stakes will be even higher.
LSU will host the 2027 SEC Championship from April 20-25, with all 16 conference teams competing for the league title.
For a Missouri team entering its first postseason under Goodman, that destination is already visible.
The Tigers just have to navigate everything in front of them first.
The Goodman era gets its first full test
One of the most intriguing parts of Missouri’s schedule is not necessarily one individual opponent.
It’s the progression.
The Tigers start with road trips and nonconference tests. They move into the SEC schedule with three consecutive home matches. Then comes a demanding road swing through Arkansas and Oklahoma, followed by another home stretch.
After that, Missouri faces four straight road matches against Texas A&M, Texas, South Carolina and Georgia.
Then it gets three final home matches before closing the regular season at LSU.
The schedule rarely allows the Tigers to become comfortable for long.
That could be exactly what Goodman needs.
The fall has been about establishing a new identity.
The spring will be about seeing whether that identity holds up.
Players such as Ackman will have an opportunity to lead a roster that features a mix of returning talent and newcomers. New additions including Irina Anghel, Mariana Higuita Barraza, Evelyn Whiteside, Millie Skelton, Alba Salles Canudas, Danielle Chapman, Daria Budko and Leticia Bazan will all have opportunities to contribute as Missouri works toward finding its strongest combinations.
The fall competition has already provided a first glimpse of those possibilities.
But fall tennis and SEC tennis are different challenges.
The spring schedule makes that distinction clear.
Missouri will have to travel.
It will have to recover.
It will have to manage momentum.
And it will have to learn how to win matches when everything isn’t going perfectly.
For a new coaching staff, those moments can reveal more than any practice session.
What to watch this spring
The first question will be lineup development.
With so many new players joining Ackman, Goodman and his staff have options. Finding the right singles order and doubles combinations will be one of the most important jobs of the early season.
The second will be consistency.
The schedule gives Missouri plenty of chances to build momentum, but it also provides stretches where matches come in rapid succession. How the Tigers respond after difficult matches could become just as important as how they perform when everything is going right.
The third will be the transition to SEC play.
Nonconference matches provide opportunities to establish confidence and identity. Conference matches raise the stakes.
By the time Vanderbilt comes to Columbia on Feb. 28, Missouri should have a much clearer idea of what it is.
The SEC will then provide the answer to whether that identity is good enough to compete.
And finally, there is the question of postseason readiness.
The SEC Championship begins April 20, only two days after Missouri’s regular-season finale against LSU.
There won’t be much time to reset.
The Tigers will have to carry everything they learned throughout the spring into the postseason.
For Goodman, that will be the first true culmination of his opening season at Missouri.
The schedule is long.
It’s spread across multiple states.
It includes familiar rivalries, new opponents and a conference slate that will demand consistency from February through April.
But it also gives Missouri something every new program needs: opportunities.
Twenty-nine of them, to be exact.
The first comes Jan. 17 in Dallas.
The last regular-season opportunity comes April 18 in Baton Rouge.
What happens between those two dates will begin to define the Goodman era.
And when Missouri returns to Louisiana two days later for the SEC Championship, the Tigers will finally find out how far those first few months under their new coach have taken them.
Tiger Top Spin will be back next Monday recapping the 49er invitational. Columns and Courts will be back next Wednesday with more insight on Mizzou Tennis.
