Assuming Mizzou is able to get past the #14 ranked Nittany Lions at 9am, they would then face the Huskers coming back at 1pm.  The 4/5 matchup would likely lead to a semi-final showdown against the #1 seeded Iowa Hawkeyes who are the unanimous #1 team in the nation following their come-from-behind win at the Midlands Tournament.  What would this quarterfinal matchup have in store for the Tigers?  Let's take a look...and remember...any prediction of mine is not likely based on a whole hell of a lot of personal knowledge :-)

As always, rankings are courtesy of Intermat, who finally put up the individual rankings (which were not available yesterday for the Penn State preview when I wrote it)

125: This weight class might hold one of the key swing matches in this dual, and something of a rarity as neither team will put a ranked wrestler out on the mat.  For the Huskers, Andy Pokorny last took a 12-6 loss to #11 Watts of Michigan, but had been up in the match 6-4 after a pretty back and forth 1st period.  On the other side, Troy Dolan won a couple of matches at the Midlands and took a 5-2 loss against #4 Nicholson of ODU.  It would be huge for the Tigers to get a win here, but this screams toss-up to me at this juncture between the two redshirt freshmen.

133: Senior Patrick Aleksanyian for Nebraska has made the NCAA tournament previously, though it was back in 2006 and it was at 141 pounds.  Since then, he has been plagued by injury a bit.  In his last outing, he won a key victory for the Huskers over an unranked Michigan wrestler.  Todd Schavrien (who is curiously no longer ranked even though he had wins over ranked opponents at Midlands) has shown solid improvement for the Tigers of late, and will need to keep that upswing going to score what should be a win here.

A little more on Schavrien's (non) ranking.  He defeated #19 Hutter and #13 Beebe, but lost to the NOW ranked #18 DeShazer...but still fell out.  I find that to be strange.

141: OK...so this is getting strange for me.  After a toss-up at 125 and a presumed (but close) win at 133, I have to give the edge to the Tigers once again at this weight.  Mizzou should be hitting the mat with now #10 Marcus Hoehn, who has had a great year thus far and has shown tremendous improvement over last season.  For the Huskers, true freshman John Burns is likely to get the call, fresh off of a 8-0 major decision loss to #4 Russell of Michigan.  Hoehn and the Tigers need to take advantage of these matchups when they present themselves, but I expect a win here for the Tigers.

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Tulsa took it to Ball St, but only achieved the under, giving FSU the win needed (especially since the other two went 0-2 on the game), so it is all over.  FSUncensored is your winner of the 2nd Annual Rock M Nation Bowl Pick 'Em Contest.  He (or she) will be the proud owner of a new Rock M Nation T-shirt of their choice from the store located on the lower left of the screen.

I will certainly update the tourney Friday morning with the final results, as well as the 2-year running totals of those who participated last year.

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The National Dual Tournament in Cedar Rapids Falls, IA (campus of University of Northern Iowa) might be my favorite wrestling event of the season.  It is the only one of it's kind, as you wrestle dual meets (team on team) in a tournament format.  There has actually been some talk about instituting some sort of similar tournament on the NCAA level, as wrestling is one of those strange sports where you wrestle individually for a team score.  Anyway, the bracket for the tourney (which kicks off Saturday morning at 9 a.m.) has been released, so let's take a look at what Mizzou might expect.

First off, the teams participating.  The tournament seeds the top 8, but 9-16 are not seeded like you might expect from your standard 16-team bracket.  You will soon see this, and I don't know why it is.  So here they are, with the seed first and then national ranking.  I WILL put them in 1-16 order (NCAA basketball style) so you can see where everything fell.  As always, rankings are courtesy of Intermat (the team rankings were updated for January 6th, but the individual rankings were not updated)

#1 - Iowa (#1)
#2 - Iowa State (#2)
#3 - Cornell (#3)
#4 - Nebraska (#4)
#5 - MIZZOU (#5)
#6 - Ohio State (#6)
#7 - Wisconsin (#9)
#8 - Minnesota (#11)
9 - Buffalo (NR)
10 - Boise St.(NR)
11 - UNI (#21)
12 - Penn State (#14)
13 - Northwestern (#20)
14 - Michigan (#17)
15 - Indiana (#19)
16 - Wyoming (NR)

So...Minnesota CLEARLY gets a great draw, as does Wisconsin.  Cornell probably gets the strangest draw as they are the #3 seed but get the 2nd highest rated 2nd tier team.  Of course, Penn State is the highest rated second tier squad, and Mizzou will draws them in the 1st round, with the winner to face the winner of Nebraska/Northwestern.  Let's take a look at Penn State...

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Another Contest Killer last night, as most went with Texas and the over.  However, FSUncensored went with Ohio State and the under, and gained 2 games on most of the field.  In fact, only MU1839 and sleepyfloyd could get a tie at this point with only 2 games/4 picks to go.  I will wait to see how the next game turns out before instituting (creating) some sort of tie-breaking method.

For the contest, the website is now a whopping 172 games under .500  That means if you bet 20 dollars on each pick,  you would be down just under 3,500 dollars.  Well done everyone! :-)

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Well...the winter break for the Monday Musings is coming to an end.  While there was only football and basketball (of both varieties) played this past week, the schedule blossoms next week into a full-on docket of Mizzou sports.  So, I suppose I am going to take this chance to speak a little longer about a couple of sports as I have the time to dedicate to it.  In the end though, any time I say I am going to keep it short, I go long and any time I decide to go long, it ends up being short, so who the hell knows how this will finish.

Football:

First off, it is rather strange to talk about a football game which happened just about a week ago already.  However, maybe this will be a blessing in disguise, as it should provide some additional perspective which Tuesday did not hold.

I did not have many parameters for the college I wanted to attend when I started looking back in high school.  They needed to have a good journalism program (as it was to be my intended major) and I wanted a big-time college atmosphere because I so enjoyed sports.  Mizzou had both (obviously) with the J-school...and basketball.  Football was different in 1995.  Few my age could tell you of the history of the 60's and 70's, all we knew was we were not good, but it was fun to go to games at Faurot six times a year.  Hell, for all of my well-documented spirit for the Tigers, my first game (against North Texas) saw me sport a navy blue Mizzou sweatshirt.  Football, for better or worse, was social more than anything.

Don't get me wrong...I cheered hard that season.  I always cheered hard, even back in high school when I lived through 10 wins in four years and never a win on homecoming....though we did tie twice.  But expectations in 1995 did not exist, so I was endoctrinated into big time college football by being able to simply go and enjoy everything else, since enjoying the game was not really a steadily viable option.

The years went on and brought the Corby/Olivo/West years of 96-98.  We tore down the goalposts in beating a 4-7 kU squad to end 1996 at 5-6.  I have a piece of that post with the words, "The Corner has been Turned" written on it.  Did I believe that when I wrote it?  Probably, but did I understand what needed to happen for that to actually be true?  Nope...but we went out there and tore them down anyway and I wrote it nonetheless.

I learned a great lesson in November of 1997.  You see, the game against Nebraska was the first time I had seen the Huskers thanks to the transition of schedules from the Big 8 to the Big 12.  The ultimate experience which I always wanted was at my feet.  The chance to take down #1 at home.  I really finally knew what it was to be at a big time college football program.  The lesson learned that night was one of how to stay in the moment and enjoy the game for what it was.  I was able to do that for about 57 mintues that night, but I faltered right at the end.  In the end, I poured my soul into what I was watching and it broke my heart...and still does every time I see that play.  The fact I have a physcial reaction to seeing something 11 years later speaks to that.

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Ugh..Black Friday it was for us.  Only ONE person got the TTech/Ole Miss game completely correct (The Tailgate Queen) and only four going over .500 on the day (The Boy, rannpb, Transmogrified Tiger, and Zou Dave).  Hell, we even had a 0'fer on the day.  With only four games left, still plenty of wiggle room at the top for the title, but I believe the dream of .500 is out the window at this point.

(Edit: I went ahead and added the UCONN/Buffalo game, which really killed the field as only two people (myself and MU1839) had UCONN and the over and the majority had Buffalo and under  The standings are now up to date with three games remaining)

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Two days, ten games and it is all done.  Still seven games (14 picks) remaining, so plenty of time to get back to .500 for some and for others, contend for the top.  FSU takes the lead back by one game, but there are now six people within two games.  Three more matchups tomorrow, I will do my best to keep this updated each night at the completion of action as we wind down.

Also, there was a scoring correction which took place over the Nevada/Maryland match-up...don't ask. Just know the scores should be correct at this juncture.

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So...the MIdlands have come and gone and I think we have learned some things about the Mizzou wrestling squad.  In the end, a 3rd place finish (team-wise) was to be expected since we were the third-best team (rankings wise).  However, how we got there was not exactly how I am sure we would have drawn it up.  I will go weight by weight here to cover our action and throw in some of my thoughts on the performance.  As always, rankings are courtesy of Intermat

125: Troy Dolan is still in the process of becoming a solid option for us at 125, but that process is coming along.  A 2-2 finish is about what I was expecting, though one of those wins was by medical forfeit.  I will take ANY win over an Iowa wrestler, and he got that with his 1-0 win to start.  He has wrestled #4 Nicholson from ODU tough both times, but has not come out on the winning end.  The 9-5 loss to Lara from Oregon State is a little disappointing (Dolan beat a different 125 from OSU a couple of weeks ago).  As long as I continue to see improvement from Dolan, I am not so worried about results at this point.

Overall at Midlands: Expected result, slight disappointment

133: #19 Todd Schavrien saw a LOT of action against ranked opponents the past two days, and came out of it pretty decently.  Reports are he was down by a good bit to #14 Conroy, but got the LATE pin for the win.  After a decision, he took a hard loss to #4 Fanthorpe, and then got stuck by a wrestler he probably should have defeated.  However, for 7th place, he came back and beat #13 Beebe, finishing the tournament at 4-2 and a nice 2-1 against ranked opponents.  I expect his ranking to rise next Tuesday when the new ones come out.

Overall at Midlands: Decent-sized surprise

141: The story of #14 Marcus Hoehn and the crappy draw of #1 Tsirtsis in the 1st round has already been well documented.  However, he did a REALLY nice job wrestling out of the consolation bracket, ripping off five straight wins before getting back to face #3 Galilck of ISU who had been upset as well and should not have been down on the losers side.  He shook off the loss there to win 7th place, closing the tourney a nice 6-2.  The only thing I would have liked to have seen was a win or two over a ranked wrestler, but the schedule did not break for him that way.  I could see him climbing a hair in the rankings.

Overall at Midlands: Pleasant surprise

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That's right...we are full service on New Year's Eve....some folks with some big scores tonight.  A couple went 8-1, a few more went 7-2.  Oregon State was -3, and scored...um...three...so their line against Pitt was a push.

Oh yeah...and we have a new leader...

Happy New Year everyone!

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