It’s crazy how three games can decide a team’s fate.
But that’s what the Missouri Tigers baseball team is looking at this weekend in a must win series that represents a golden opportunity. This weekend’s series with Ole Miss is one of those make or break moments. But it’s series where they should come out victors.
The Tigers have slumped as of recently, being losers of four straight games and 5 of their last 6. It’s long fall from the No. 14 ranked team they were just two weeks ago. But every team has their struggles. This is a salvageable stretch of games that could decide their fate. Time to get back to winning.
Here’s the scenario:
Mizzou wins the series (at least 2 wins) and improves to 28 or 29 wins on the season, wins its 6th SEC conference series, and gets right back into the hunt for the SEC East division.
Mizzou botches the series against a beatable team, falls to 18 or 19 losses on the year, drops out of the top 25 and loses significant ground on not only any chance of an SEC championship, but also possibly starts dwindling on the edge of missing the national tournament all together.
While missing the tournament is very unlikely for this team, it’s never a good sign moving toward the post season when you start playing your worst baseball of the year and can’t muster a series win against a mediocre SEC West team.
Now, think about how everyone was thinking about this team a year ago. We should all be extremely happy that this season has gone as tremendously as it has. It’s been one of the nation’s brightest stories, an incredible turn around.
But the expectations are there now. That’s how sports work. Once you set a precedence with winning games, that becomes the new norm very quickly and you must now meet those standards. Missouri Tigers baseball is a 35+ win team in 2015. They need to go out there and show it this weekend.
More from Truman's Tales
- Believe it or not, Missouri football has never played these FBS teams
- Missouri Tigers all-time round-by-round NCAA tournament record
- March Madness schedule: When do the Missouri Tigers play next? (Updated Round of 64)
- The Missouri Tigers Kansas Jayhawks Border War Renews
- Marching Mizzou Marches into the Big Apple