This season is starting to develop a rhythm. I saw Stanford on the ACC weekly awards graphics and didn’t even panic a little. The early season absentees are starting to either return or declare the reasons for being out, so we at least know what we’re dealing with. Here are my quandaries, reflections, and disquietudes as we try, and likely fail, to assemble some early season narratives.
Question: What does the next gear look like for Missouri?
Nobody worked harder in the offseason than the Missouri coaches. The talent on this roster is stunning, but it’s also a very old team. If nationals doesn’t happen this year, the plan to get there next year will have to look quite different without the likes of Jocelyn Moore and Mara Titarsolej.
Given the brevity of this window of opportunity, No. 11 isn’t quite where Mizzou would like to be. There’s no need to panic about that, though: January rankings don’t matter, and there’s plenty of time to start producing the kind of scores that will take it to Fort Worth. I’m just curious about what changes we’ll see over the next few weeks to start improving.
The key pieces of vault and floor are in place, with the possible exception of Elise Tisler on vault. It’s just landings there, and this is a team…
