Mizzou Football: Three things to watch in Week 2 vs West Virginia

Mizzou football suffered an opening weekend loss on the road against the Wyoming Cowboys last Saturday. But this weekend, the Tigers host the West Virginia Mountaineers for the team’s home-opener.

Despite the loss in Laramie, all is not lost for the Missouri Tigers. For one thing, conference play has yet to begin, and the Tigers still look to make some noise in the SEC East. For another, they have favorable match-ups in each of their next six games, starting with this SEC-Big 12 clash.

Here are three things for which to watch when the Tigers welcome the Mountaineers to Columbia, Missouri.

How Odom’s Tigers Rebound

There really is no beating around the bush: the loss to Wyoming stings. That was a game that Mizzou was very much supposed to win. And things looked good for a while, too, what with the Tigers jumping out to a 14-0 lead before badly faltering until waking up in the fourth quarter.

So will head coach Barry Odom be able to get this group back on track for their game against West Virginia? To answer that, let’s take a look at what Odom’s Tigers have done after a loss during his first three seasons with Mizzou.

In 2016, Mizzou went 4-8 (2-6). Yet after three of those losses, the Tigers won the following week. Of course, the team suffered a five-game losing streak in the middle of the season, going winless from September 24th through November 12th.

The following season, the Tigers improved to 7-6 (4-4). That was a season of streaks for Mizzou, as Odom’s squad utterly failed to stop the bleeding once they lost. In Week 2, the Tigers lost to South Carolina, and lost the next four games, too, before finally defeating Idaho. That win against the Potatoes started a six-game winning streak before the team dropped its bowl game to the Texas Longhorns.

Last season, the Tigers first loss didn’t come until their fourth week when they were hammered by the Georgia Bulldogs. That set off a three-game losing streak for the Tigers, which they finally snapped by annihilating Memphis.

Yet, the following week, they lost again, this time to Kentucky. But it’s what happened next that’s important: Mizzou won the following week on the road against Florida, and didn’t lose again during the regular season. Overall, including a bowl loss against Oklahoma State, the Tigers went 8-5 (4-4).

Hopefully for the Tigers, what happens next follows more along the lines of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? And lately, not only did Odom’s Tigers quickly rebound from a loss, they rolled through their next four opponents, winning those games by over an average of 24 points per game.