Pourover: Post Border War, what’s left is the work ahead

Beating your most hated rival carries with it all the euphoric feelings, I’m convinced most of it is an expungement of all the stress you cultivate while watching the game. A lot is going to be written about how important it was to get the rivalry back on track, and how important it was for Missouri to beat Kansas. We’ve spent thousands of words on this rivalry over the past week (and funny enough I wrote the kU hoops preview the morning before the game), and so many more for the last (forever) years,

it seems.

Tigers versus Jayhawks. There are college rivalries which should happen each and every year regardless and this at, or near, the top of the list regardless of conference affiliation. Duke-North Carolina, Alabama-Auburn, Michigan-Michigan State, Ole Miss-Mississippi State, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, we need these games as college sports fans. No matter if you’re a fan of either team you know you can tune in and be entertained.

Look, it’s great that it’s back. I’m thrilled Mizzou played, and beat Kansas. Really. It was stressful, and fun, and wild, and irritating, and everything you remembered it could be. But this was a really important win for a reason that might be even bigger than the rivalry.

We all like Bill Connelly around here, and in Bill’s SP+ rankings going into the weekend Kansas was ranked 26th.

22 through 30 reads like this: TCU, Auburn, Texas Tech, Clemson, Kansas, Iowa State, BYU, Arkansas, Arizona State. If you swap any of those teams in for the Jayhawks this past weekend, this is still a huge win early in the season.

I think Missouri has a chance to be really good this year. Like 10 win level good again, if things swing their way maybe even a College Football Playoff type season. But to get there, they needed to win this game. Take the name on the front of the jersey away, and this win set Missouri up for more down the road. If you can’t beat ~insert high quality but not great team here~ at home in early September, how can you expect to beat South Carolina, Texas A&M or Alabama at home later?

Beating #26 in SP+ at home and doing so in a way that was fairly dominant means something. Look, weird things happened in the 1st quarter, and it’s because of the 1st quarter that there was any question of who might win the game in the 4th quarter.

The first quarter looked like this: 21-6 with Kansas in the lead, each team had 123 yards of offense and more than 7 minutes of offense, but one turnover by the Tigers led to 7 Jayhawk points. There was also a 4th down conversion by the Jayhawks that lead to another 7 points, and another deep pass play with some blown coverage that led to another score. Missouri was out of sorts. You do have to give some credit to Lance Leipold and his team for making the plays, but the time of possession, per play average, and number of plays run did not show up on the score board.

But Missouri settled in the second quarter. The score was 15-0, the yards were 186 to -18, the total plays were 28 to 4, and the time of possession was 14:04 to 0:56. The third quarter was similar, score was 7-3, yards 115 to 48, total plays 22 to 10, and time of possession was 10:01 to 4:53. Then the 4th quarter went 14-7, 171 to 101, 19 to 18, and 8:31 to 6:29.

From the 3rd quarter on Mizzou was +26 on the scoreboard, +341 on the yardage, +37 in total plays, and +20:17 in total possession time.

The underlying metrics would tell you that Missouri dominated.

Again, take the name off the jersey and if you just whipped Texas Tech the way you did the Jayhawks over 3 quarters, I think you’d be feeling pretty good about what that means if you can clean up how the first quarter went, right?

Mizzou looks like a good team. But can they be a great one? If they just beat everyone they play below them in the SP+ right now they’re looking at a 9 win regular season. That’s wins over Central Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mass, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, and Arkansas. Losses to Alabama, South Carolina and Oklahoma. We’ll see what this weeks results do to the rankings, but the Tigers have six more home games and they’re 2-0. What beating Kansas proves is that you’re capable of at least being that kind of team again this season.

The rest is the work ahead.