Pourover: Finding the path to go from good to great

Confidence can be a funny thing. Some teams seem to have it week one, some need to build it week over week. For a sport like football, a sport full of bravado, with players talking trash and celebrating even the most meager of plays, real confidence is more fickle than is let on. Just because a few players strut and post doesn’t mean they’re truly confident.

You could see South Carolina’s confidence zapped out of them as the first half wore on. It was right around the time of the third straight scoring drive when Mizzou was flexing their will upon the Gamecocks where I had the thought it looked like they were giving up. In the first half and after Mizzou’s first 3 and out, they ran 31 plays. Five plays went for no gain or negative yardage, the other 26 plays ripped the heart right out of a fragile football team.

Those four first half drives went for 295 yards. That’s almost 10 yards a play, and when you remove the other 5 plays it jumps to 11.2 yards per play. That’s just gashing a defense.

We can talk about the second half, and how Missouri got conservative while South Carolina showed some fight. A little of column A and a little of column B. But the second half was merely ceremonial. Sure you would have liked things to have been a bit cleaner. Convert an extra 3rd down, maybe don’t fumble the snap on a punt, and you feel a lot better about the third quarter. But they recovered with a respectable enough 4th quarter, never let a good South Carolina offense into the end zone, and won a conference game by 22 points.

When that’s considered a disappointing second half performance, well you have to feel like you’re in a good spot.

Missouri is a confident team right now. You can tell even when they screw up. Even when things aren’t going well, this is still a team that looks like it expects to make the plays it needs to win. When LSU was catching up, there was no flinch, they just didn’t make the plays. When Kentucky pounced there was no flinch. They just made the plays. Then as South Carolina was struggling to making things remotely interesting in the second half the defense tightened and held South Carolina to just 2 for 7 on 3rd down conversions.

There are a lot of things about this Missouri team, their resilience, their malleability, but perhaps the best part… they haven’t played a complete game yet.

Entering a bye week at 7-1, you have a week to heal up, and a chance to go be great. On the horizon is the biggest game of the season because it will determine whether or not everything still remains on the table for this team. I have no idea just how good Missouri is or isn’t, but one thing I do know is they have all they need to be great. They’re at least pretty good, and so far at best very good. It’s just about taking that one last step from good to great.

The step towards being great begins with a trip to Athens in a couple weeks.

Other SEC Scores:

• Alabama (11) 34, Tennessee (17) 20
• Ole Miss (13) 28, Auburn 21
• LSU (19) 62, Army 0
• Mississippi State 7, Arkansas 3