Alright...no real idea or notion how this is going to work here, as Mizzou wrestled in FOUR dual matches on Saturday afternoon up in Troy, NY.  Fortunately, each dual started at 125, so I will be able to go in order.  I will recap the match VERY briefly and give you a running total so you can get some feel for how each dual was playing out.  There were some nice upsets individually for the (now) #5 Tigers as they took on #21 Old Dominion, #26 Maryland, Harvard and Brown.  Rankings are updated and courtesy of Intermat and off we go.

125: (Troy Dolan 2-2)

vs. Old Dominion - Dolan drew a real tough first match against the #4 wrestler in the country in James Nicholson.  Still searching for his first dual win, Dolan showed considerable improvement in only losing the match 3-0.  The early loss would put the Tigers down 3-0.

vs. Maryland - Dolan got even better in this match, but still could not pull out a win.  Falling 4-2 against his Terp opponent, Dolan put the Tigers down 3-0 to begin this as well, but was getting very close to his first win.

vs. Harvard - Not entirely sure this is the way Troy Dolan wanted to get his first dual win at Mizzou, but he will take the forfeit victory and the 6 quick points which would put the Tigers up 6-0.

vs. Brown - This was more like it, as Dolan's confidence must be on the rise, as he gets another win, and in style this time with a pinfall for another 6-0 Tiger lead.  With starts like that in a dual, the Tigers may be almost impossible to beat on the season.

133: (Todd Schavrien 3-1)

vs. Old Dominion - ODU certainly deserves their national ranking, as they are a very tough team at the top of the weight chart.  Schavrien would step out on the mat after Dolan's loss to take on the #13 wrestler in the country, and he would step off the mat with a big 8-4 victory. This would even the match for the Tigers at 3-3, and give Schavrien his biggest win of the day.

vs. Maryland - Taking on another ranked opponent in #9 Steve Bell of Maryland, Schavrien could not make it two in a row, and fell to the Terp 6-1.  The loss would be his only one on the day, and it would make the team score 6-0 Maryland.

vs. Harvard - The loss must have lit a fire under Schavrien, as he would go on to dominate his next two matches, starting with this one with a tech fall over his opponent 18-3.  The 5 points would give the Tigers a very impressive 11-0 early lead over the Crimson.

vs. Brown - Trying to one-up himself, Schavrien would close out his day in fine fashion, scoring a major decision off of a 15-5 win.  The four points would give Mizzou a 10-0 lead on the Bears and close out a very productive and exciting day for them at 133.

141: (#14 Marcus Hoehn 4-0)

vs. ODU - First off, yes folks...you are reading that correctly.  Marcus Hoehn has parlayed an impressive start to his senior campaign into a #14 national ranking.  He would do this by sweeping his day, starting with a 7-4 win over #11 Ryan Williams, the Tigers 2nd upset over a ranked ODU wrestler on the day.  The win would give the Tigers a 6-3 lead which they would never relinquish.

vs. Maryland - It would not get much easier for Hoehn in his 2nd match, as his next opponent would be #15 ranked Alex Krom.  In an exciting match, Hoehn would notch his second upset in as many matches, scoring a 6-5 win.  This was the first one the day for Mizzou against Maryland, and would put them back in it at 6-3.

vs. Harvard - Must have scared off the Crimson wrestler, as Hoehn gets the forfeit, 6 points and a new Tiger lead of 17-0.

vs. Brown - The Ivy League forfeits against Hoehn continued, as the Brown wrestler did not take the mat, giving Hoehn the sweep on the day and 6 more points for the Tigers, who would lead in this match 16-0.

Continue reading this post »

Alright...I cannot guarantee how much I am going to touch on things here, as I dont have a ton of time.  So...let's say Tuesday is the bullet edition of the Monday Musings.

Football:

• I just do not like the gold jerseys.  Did not like how they looked in the store when someone on T-board broke them.  Did not like how they looked on our guys dry.  Did not like how they looked at the end of a game.
• Warrior-like effort from Chase Coffman.  I felt we did not need him to win.  Had other things been better, we probably did not need him...but if this is his last game, that was quite an effort.  And yes, that may be somewhat defeatist, but given his total lack of mobility after all of this time, I am not really confident he will see the field again.
• Similar effort from Maclin...I will be curious to see his mobility going forward.
• I have never seen a defensive secondary so out of touch with what their teammate was doing.  In game 1...OK.  In game 5, worrisome.  In game 12....absolutely mind-blowing.
• It is exciting to see some of the records MU players are close to breaking.  Would love to see Derrick Washington get 20 rushing TD's this season with his 1,000 yards.
• Exciting news for former OCDC...and shame on Mizzou fans who whined when they heard the news that Matt E. may not be a favorite for the position at Toledo.
• I think I am out of bullets for football
• I will be there this weekend in KC for the game against OU....I go in with only one hope...that the weather is good.
• Make that two hopes...that they are not wearing those jerseys again

Continue reading this post »

Been a long time since I was able to update this, but let's see how the record books shook out after the kU game.  With two games remaining on the season, there are still some pretty lofty heights Mizzou players are in position to achieve.  How close are they?  Click on through to the other side....

Continue reading this post »

I don't think it is any secret I do most of the Musings in whatever free time I have on Sundays.  However, after a lengthy trip to MN and getting back Sunday night, there just is not enough time, especially given what I walked into at work this morning.  Therefore, the Monday Musings will be pushed back a day, and I will still cover the FOUR dual meets (all wins by the way) Mizzou had in wrestling on Saturday.  Until then...congrats to DC on his new position and I will see you all tomorrow.

I just wanted to take a moment to put some thoughts together as we get close to the Thanksgiving holiday.  I am headed north for the duration of the holiday (starting this afternoon actually)  and probably will be on something of a media blackout to spend time with my family.  And it is not like I participate in the Mizzou football threads as it is :-)   But, I wanted to lay out some thoughts as I "celebrate" the first real full year of Rock M Nation.

For those of you who might now know, while not at all a Tiger fan since birth like many, I have been around the world wide web with the Tigers  since the pretty young days of Tigerboard.  I watched that community grow and made some great friends through it.  As the years went on and more and more people joined the net, the atmosphere grew and it became tougher and tougher to cultivate good discussion without a lot of other...shall we call...noise.

So in the end, I am thankful for The Boy and rpt getting together so quickly, easily and successfully and the type of atmosphere they have been able to cultivate here.  I have and shall continue to enjoy my role here at Rock M and really do hope I have been able to contribute just a little bit to what makes this site as great as it is.  I am exicted for what the new year brings and will always have my eye on growing the community, but never at the risk of the community itself, which I think is in a great place right now.

So whether it is BTBS, National Threads, Big Twelvelol (or whatever the hell he called it), Weekly Facebook messages, bacon, the little Asian kid, TruFlair or Professor Chaos Daniel, I have enjoyed it all and thank you all for how each of you have enriched my life this past year.

Happy Holidays to each and every one of you

Well, I do have to say I enjoyed much of the action of the games on Saturday...some good live blogging there I suppose.  It was almost nice to not have a game and just enjoy the afternoon (problematic shoulder not withstanding....though enough beer will make even that pain go away).

Anyway, all of that is neither here nor there as it pertains to this column.  Let's see how the week went for our Tigers, as they wind down the fall sports and crank up some of the winter action.

Football:

Yeah...um...I guess in order I will take Ttech, UT and then OU for our opponent in two weeks.  Really....that's all I have to say about that.  Good lord was OU just lethal.  That is all I can really muster about that....just scary how good OU was in that game in all areas.  Will they be that good in the rest of their games?  Probably not...but I am guessing they will be decently close.

Men's Hoops:

Pretty darn full week for the Tigers, with four games care of the Puerto Rico/On Campus ESPNU Tourament.  I went into the...um...Roundtable I think saying that I wanted 3-1 out of the week, and that is what we got.  No sense in reviewing each of the games since that would result in a LOT of paragraphs, so let's take the high-level look.

The team is sitting at 4-1 and has seen some very positive things so far.   The emergence of JT Tiller as a decent offensive threat (when he is on the court).  The energy (at the least) the freshman can create and add, especially on the defensive end.  The ability to win a game when Matt Lawrence is not on ( or really ever in the game).  Demarre Carroll is further emerging as a big scoring threat and our defense and numbers and energy seems to wear teams out around the 30 minute mark of each game.

Continue reading this post »

Mizzou had their first home action of the season, as the Pride of Hofstra visited Hearnes.  Hofstra was fresh off of an upset over highly ranked Penn State, and is known all throghout the wrestling community as being a giant killer in dual meets.  A big crowd would be on hand for the first annual Wrestlers for Wrestling fund raiser, with all the money from the dual going towards the endowed fund.  Let's take a look at how the Tigers fared.  Of course, if you were involved in yesterday's live football thread, you can go back through that and gleam some of my "live" thoughts.

125:

Certainly going to be a learning experience for RS Frosh Troy Dolan at the start of this season.  From a team standpoint, having Pescaglia this weight would make us all the tougher, but we will get through it.  Dolan is still searching for his first win, as he fell in a 8-2 decision to Bonanno of Hostra.  The two were scoreless through the first and Bonanno started the 2nd on bottom.  From there, he earned an escape and then took Dolan down.  Dolan would start period 3 on bottom and earned the escape to get the match to 3-1, but Bonanno would take Dolan down two more times while earning the riding time point to finish the match the winner at 8-2.  This would put the Tigers down 3-0 to start.

133:

Tough matchup for sophomore Todd Schavrien at 133, having to take on a highly ranked Lou Ruggirello.  "Lou" would get the early takedown on Schavrien and immediately put him on his back.  Very quickly, as in 51 seconds, Schavrien would be pinned and Hofstra would do what they normally do against ranked teams...earn bouns points.  This would put them up 9-0.  While we could not expect a win here from Schavrien, you do hope matchups like this do not end in pin.

141:

Junior Marcus Hoehn would take the mat in need of a win for the Tigers, who had not even scored a takedown yet against the Pride.  Hoehn fought a tough first , scoreless first period until Justin Accordino took Hoehn down at the buzzer to end the 1st up 2-0.  Hoehn would start on bottom and get the escape in the 2nd, but Accordino would take him down again to extend his lead to 4-1.  Accordino was given the escape in the 3rd period, but Hoehn could not muster any offense and the match would end as a 5-1 decision.  This would make the score 12-0 and put the Tigers in a pretty desparate need of some wins.

149:

Mizzou would look to senior Andrew Sherry in the next match, and  pretty wild match it was with Paul Gillespie.  Sherry got out to an early lead, getting a take down and two additional points for near-fall to build a 4-0 lead.  But Gillespie would come right back, reversing Sherry for two points, and then getting two near-fall points himself to even the score at 4, still in the 1st.  Sherry would escape and finish the crazy first period up 5-4.  Sherry took neutral to start the second, a smart choice as he was able to score another takedown, finishing the period after a Gillespie escape up 7-5.  Gillespie would get his escape in the 3rd to cut it to 7-6, but could not muster any additional offense against Sherry.  With 1:27 of riding time, Sherry would bring home Mizzou's first win of the afternoon with a 8-6 decision, making the dual score 12-3.

Continue reading this post »