Gary Pinkel's arguably most erratic team during his time in Columbia will try to keep hopes of bowl eligibility alive when they face a streaky Texas A&M squad that's combated its second half defensive breakdowns with a steady dose of points and... OH MAN, WE SO TRIED: This is the Big 12's SEC game, and that's all anyone - fans of the programs included - will be able to talk about on Saturday.
Realignment has overshadowed the entire 2011 season, but it's totally eclipsed this particular game. Sadly, the two coaches involved are being really uncooperative and have been sticks in the mud about talking football, this particular game, no outside distractions, and no fun in general.
Did you know Mizzou thumped Texas A&M last season 30-9, and from there the Aggies went on a five game winning streak? Mike Sherman does, and he'd have you know it has nothing to do with the SEC:
"With low points come high points. It also propelled us to a six-game run. I think we learned from the mistakes of the Missouri game and got better after that. It definitely was a low point but you can learn a lot about yourself and what you need to do from those low points if you look at yourself objectively. Just like today, after the Iowa State game...today will be a tough day for these guys because we'll come at them hard about the things we need to get better at. You always analyze yourself and we'll do it today the same way we'd do it after a loss. At that time of year (last year) we were trying to find our identity and were struggling in a lot of areas. So we learned lot of things we had to get better at. Does it linger? It does for me, because we should have played better.