Two Mizzou backs run for 100-plus yards, and Tigers are a win away from a bowl
Call the Missouri football team lucky to have a weak schedule, or you can say the Tigers’ poor division has prevented their win total from reflecting their true competency. Both might be true, but so is this: Mizzou has now won four consecutive games after beating Tennessee 50-17.
Since losing to Georgia on Oct. 14, none of the Tigers’ opponents have had a winning record, and the final two teams Mizzou will play this regular season — Vanderbilt and Arkansas — are each 4-6. Missouri needs to win one of those games to secure bowl eligibility.
Yes, there’s some fortune working in their favor. But the Tigers also received a blow when sophomore running back Damarea Crockett left that Georgia game with a shoulder injury that has still kept him off the field. He ran for more than 1,000 yards as a freshman, so that should have hurt this offense — but it has not.
Instead, the Tigers have won each of the past four games Crockett has missed. And on Saturday, behind one of the country’s best offensive lines, they accomplished something they had not done since when they played Tennessee a season ago: Two Tigers, Ish Witter and Larry Rountree, rushed for 100-plus yards on Saturday.
Witter had 216 rushing yards, while Rountree ran for 155 yards.
“Both tailbacks are running as physical and as tough as we’ve had here in a long time,” MU coach Barry Odom said.
Tennessee came into the game allowing an average of 237.3 rushing yards per game, second worst in the SEC, and it showed against Missouri.
Rountree had a 64-yard run during Mizzou’s final drive of the first half, and three plays later he ran 1 yard for a score that put Missouri ahead 24-17 going into halftime.Witter ran for 70 yards and a touchdown on 6 carries during Mizzou’s first scoring drive in the first quarter. He had a 52-yard run in the third quarter.
Odom said that Witter seemed abnormally quiet at practice on Wednesday, so he asked the senior running back if anything was wrong. Witter said no, that he was just particularly focused on continuing this strong ending to the Tigers’ season. So Odom felt comfortable making a grand request from the fourth-year running back on senior night.
“I said I need you to run for about 216 yards tonight, average about 9 yards a carry,” Odom joked. “And he did it.”
That yardage total gave Witter more than 2,000 yards for his career. Rountree, a true freshman who ran for three scores a week ago against Florida, rushed 18 times for his 155 yards.
“That’s not easy to do, especially with as young as Larry is and you’re playing in this conference,” quarterback Drew Lock said of Rountree’s workload. “That’s not something you’d ask a normal kid to do.”
In all, the Tigers ran for 433 yards, the most by a Missouri team since a 2003 game against Texas Tech.
If it weren’t for a few dropped passes, as well as a dropped interception by safety Kaleb Prewett, Mizzou could have scored even more. The Tigers, whose 33-point margin of victory was their greatest ever against an SEC team, believe they should have scored even more.
“It’s not going to be all happy go lucky around here,” said Lock, who has thrown at least three touchdowns in each of Mizzou’s past six games. “Truly, that was not enough points to me, in my mind.”
Lock threw a bad first-quarter interception that Tennessee returned 70 yards for a score, but he also threw four touchdowns, including a 50-yard one to Emanuel Hall that hit the receiver in stride just outside the end zone for one of his two touchdown receptions.
That 50-yard touchdown to Hall gave Mizzou its first two-score lead of the game, and a Tennessee team that came into the weekend with the second-worst scoring offense in the SEC stood no real chance after that.
The Vols started true freshman Will McBride at quarterback because Tennessee’s usual starter, Jarrett Guarantano’s ankle injury prevented him from starting. McBride saw his first action of the season a week ago, when Guarantano first suffered his injury.
Guarantano was available, but he did not play. The Tigers’ pressured McBride often, and they sacked him five times, one of which resulted in him fumbling. The Volunteer offensive line ranked last in the SEC in tackles-for-loss-allowed coming into the game.
McBride completed 16 of 32 passes for 139 yards. He threw interceptions on consecutive pass attempts in the third quarter, and Mizzou scored on the possessions that followed each of them.
During Tennessee’s next series, Anthony Sherrils, who recorded one of those interceptions, forced and recovered a fumble.
After not forcing more turnovers than its opponent in each of its first eight games, Mizzou has done so in each of its past two contests.
“I’ve said all along our margin of error is not very much,” Odom said when asked about the turnover margin. “That hasn’t changed.”
The Tigers’ third-down defense, another problem during most of this season, was at its best yet this season. Mizzou held Tennessee to 28.6 percent conversion rate, a season-low for the MU defense.
Tennessee’s final score came on its last drive of the first half, when McBride lofted a 19-yard pass to the end zone for a score before Terry Beckner Jr. could get to him.
“Our guys are understanding how to play together,” Odom said. “… It’s taken some time. We’re slowly getting there.”
Seven weeks ago, the head coach went on a rant after Auburn crushed his team. He declared the program he inherited to be a “turnaround” project.
The statement was an attempt to buy more patience from fans during a point in the season when it appeared this team might win just three games all season. But instead the Tigers are now within a win of what the goal was during the preseason: making a bowl game.
Odom said Saturday he knew his team was close, and now they’re proving to be ahead of the schedule he tried to set for them.
This story was originally published November 11, 2017 at 10:08 PM with the headline "Two Mizzou backs run for 100-plus yards, and Tigers are a win away from a bowl."