Initial thoughts: Auburn – Mizzou Today: Missouri Tigers Football & Basketball Recruiting

Here is what was on my mind right as the final whistle sounded and Missouri’s conference losing streak extended to 20.

1. Mizzou isn’t one of the best teams in the country. We knew that coming in. Auburn is one of the best teams in the country. We knew that coming in.

What we saw today was a pretty good representation of the difference in talent level between the teams.

Outside of 3-point shooting and 3-point defense, I can’t really point to anything Mizzou did overly poorly, Auburn was just able to take advantage of any little space, any turnover, any misstep on defensive switches.

That’s what the best teams in the country do.

2. The biggest issue today was Auburn did a fantastic job shutting down Mizzou’s best players.

Ant Robinson ended with zero points on 0-of-2 shooting with two rebounds and two assists.

Mark Mitchell had six points and was 2-of-9 shooting with some bad looks taken. He ended with one rebound.

Tamar Bates had eight points on 3-of-9 shooting, including 0-of-4 from 3.

Josh Gray played 9 minutes and had three points and two rebounds.

If those guys aren’t producing, Mizzou is going to be in trouble whether its playing arguably the best team in the country or not.

3. Missouri is going to lose games in conference play and some of them are going to look bad. We knew that coming in. Some crazy stuff is going to have to happen for Mizzou to beat Auburn/Tennessee/Alabama this season.

Those teams are just really, really good.

4. The final main lineup of Marques Warrick, T.O. Barrett, Annor Boateng, Marcus Allen, Jacob Crews played really well.

I think Dennis Gates was trying to send a message to the other guys that the depth can play and there’s no guarantee that just because you’ve been one of the best guys so far doesn’t mean you’ll continue to get a significant amount of minutes.

Who knows if the message landed, but after a few minutes, it just became clear that lineup was working, so he left it in the rest of the game.

5. Winning any road games in the SEC is going to be incredibly tough this season, starting the conference schedule with one at Auburn was about as tough as it’s going to get.