I live outside St Louis, man I just want to beat them and every year so far it has been just well another year of listening to how big and bad the SEC East was and that yada yada yada on the Vols if we can get the W on Mizzou i will be satisfied. Sorry but living in their back yard makes it very difficult. Even today the Soccer team beat the lady Vols and at Volleyball game tonight some MU fan had to bring it up, of course my power T on the Truck and the T hat gave me no shot at anything...lol this is the year we break through on the tigers.
when you think about it, Dooley lost to UK in 2011 and we finished behind them, dead last in the SEC at 1-7. Kentucky managed to beat some other team (MSU?) and so was 2-6. Think about it. Even though we beat Vandy that year (in a close game on a questionable call) we were LAST in the SEC East. Something i never thought I'd see.
But then we beat UK for a sole SEC win at the end of 2012, but that was with Chaney as interim coach. Doofus doesn't even get credit for that. even though we again finished 1-7, C did manage to beat UK who was 0-8, so we climbed one notch to sixth place.
In 2013, Butch again beat UK but lost to Vandy (first back to back losses to Vandy since 1926
) but managed to beat USC to finish 2-6. Once again, that was sixth place but we did beat USC. another East rival and our record in the SEC improved to 2-6.
Last year we finally beat Vandy, repeated the upset against USC and held serve against Kentucky for 3-5, our best SEC record since 2010, which was good for a tie for fourth place with USC. There is no such thing as a "tie breaker" but since we won the head to head, you could argue that we went from 6th to 4th.
the placement is not that big a deal to me, but the overall SEC record and particularly the ability to defeat East rivals is huge.
Think of it this way....
In 2012 we broke a one game loss streak to UK
In 2013 we broke a 3-game loss streak to USC and still beat UK
In 2014 we broke a 2-game loss streak to Vandy and still beat USC and UK
In 2015 we broke a 5-game loss streak to Uga and.....????
If we can add Mizzou to the list this year, and hold serve on USC, UK, and Vandy, we will then have beaten all our East rivals since Dools left with the exception of UF, and look how close we got the last two years.
We likely lose to bammer, but make no mistake about it, beating Mizzou will be huge. Not so much that it would be a "big win". Mizzou lacks the rival status and brand name, but other than UF they are the only other East team we have yet to beat in the post-Doofus era (hell...we have never beaten them at all!)
I don't care what anyone says, that's a game we need to win and it will be big.