My honest answer, I think between 7 and 9
Posted on: July 22, 2016 at 11:18:48 CT
mizzoudiehard MU
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With a ceiling of 10 wins.
The nice thing about the schedule is that while there are a good amount of tough games, there are also a lot of winnable home games to get us on a bit of a roll (hopefully).
Most optimistic: 10-3 in non-conference play. In this scenario, I imagine we lose to Xavier in Puerto Rico, then beat Clemson/Davidson, then lose to Arizona State. We then lose to Arizona at home, but win all of our other home games and beat Illinois in St. Louis.
Least optimistic: 7-6. We lose all three game in Puerto Rico, lose to Arizona, lose to Illinois and drop another home game somewhere to Western Kentucky or something.
I'm an admitted blind optimist, but I truly don't think the 10-3 scenario is THAT far-fetched. It would require a few things: 1) avoiding fluke losses to the lesser opponents at home, 2) handling Evansville, WKU and Miami OH at home as well, 3) winning just one game in Puerto Rico and 4) beating Illinois. If we were to somehow do that, we'd be coming into SEC play with a couple of decent wins and no baggage or bad losses. Then, all you really need to do is finish .500 in the SEC, or even a little bit worse at 8-10 or 7-11, and you're looking at a 17-18 win campaign with some actual momentum toward 2017-18.
I realize most of you will laugh at that, but it's not entirely impossible.