You contradict yourself, he's not good, but, he's a gamer. Kinda sounds like some of the Dobbs hype.
Not in the least. Mauk isn't accurate. He isn't consistent. But when the pressure is on, you'll always get his best shot... which against the weaker competition he's faced has been enough. When he's played good teams... not so much. His inconsistency has put them down before he could do anything "plucky".
Just saying he has the East Champs to validate, Towles, who should play on Sunday, doesn't.
Just saying that if they'd played the West slate of UT, UGA, UF, or even USCe over the last two years they wouldn't have won the East. Their '13 team was a good team. Their team last year wasn't a very good team. They were the beneficiaries of a weak schedule and a couple of UGA chokes... plus UT and UF being down. At least one of those programs is close to being back to their historic position in the East.
You are also blowing off point 1, Pinkle is that good. Hope we beat them, but, this one will be close.
Pinkel is a good coach. He's had a run of good players which isn't atypical of his tenure at Mizzou. You know how many conference championships he's won at MU? Zero.
In both the Big 12 and the SEC he's managed to be pretty consistently 2nd tier. Which means he can win a division championship when the division is down as the Big 12 North was and as the East has been. In his 4 CG appearances... he's avg'd losing by 27 pts.
His thing works as long as one of two things happens. One, opposing coaches assume his team is better than it is and give him a chance by trying to "manage" the game. Two, the talent gap isn't very wide- he is a difference maker when talent levels are close.
There will be a significant talent gap between UT and MU this fall. Hopefully Jones won't overestimate them but instead run over them.
