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Olympic Sports Catch Up: Fifth Edition

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Let’s dig into all that’s going on in the world of Mizzou’s non-rev sports!

Welcome to “Olympic Sports Catch Up!” As the Olympic sports manager at this beautiful little website, I lead a team of talented and passionate writers who have a special interest in non-revenue Olympic sports at Missouri (I despise the phrase “non-revenue.”) Because football & men’s basketball rule the digital pages of Rock M in terms of readership, I thought I’d try to draw some extra eyeballs over to my side of the internet and the sports that are consuming us these days.

I’ve broken down each of the sports below and will be sharing recent results, fun/relevant info, upcoming matches, and any writing our talented crew has done. If there’s relevant social media posts or MU Tigers news, I’ll share that as well.

Enjoy! It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve gotten one of these out… apologies.

Women’s Basketball

  • Recent Results: Mizzou- 66, #16 OU- 82 | Mizzou 69 — Texas A&M 59

V. Oklahoma, Round 2: Ashton Judd— 13pts on 5-9 FG (2-4 3pt), 3 REB | Grace Slaughter— 12pts on 4-7 FG (3-5 3pt), 3 REB, 6 T0 | Laniah Randle— 12pts on 5-12 FG, 5 REB | Nyah Wilson— 8pts on 3-4 FG

AT A&M: Grace Slaughter— 29pts on 9-17 FG (3-6 3pt), 4 REB | De’Myla Brown— 12pts on 4-9 FG (2-6 3pt), 5 REB | Abbey Schreacke— 10pts on 3-9 FG (3-6 3pt), 2 REB

Just when we thought the Tigers might have turned a corner, their season-long problems returned. Yikes. Here’s what Dylan had to say about it:

Now tell me if you’ve heard THIS story: Mizzou builds a lead against a top-20 team, holding tough at the half. But things fall apart after a poor third quarter, as Mizzou (12-13, 1-9 SEC) can’t push back enough in the fourth.

This was the lede I used for the LSU loss a little over a week ago. I figured, might as well bring it back as Mizzou (13-14, 2-10 SEC) lost at home to No. 16 Oklahoma (19-6, 7-5 SEC) in the EXACT SAME WAY.

He’s not kidding. It was the same. And it’s absolutely dumbfounding.

Yay, more Top-25 matchups! This week, the Tigers will face Oklahoma for the second time (see recap above) and welcome in the Kenny Brooks & Georgia Amoore tandem from the Bluegrass State. What will they need to do to find success? First, and I think more importantly, they’ll need to flip the script, as Dylan writes:

In Mizzou’s last three losses, they found themselves either ahead or juuust behind at the half. That’s when their opponents would kick it into high gear, pulling away and leaving Mizzou in the dust.

As Dylan wrote in this very happy recap, Mizzou’s improved play FINALLY led them to a another win, and their first SEC road game win in over a year. Enjoy this.

The Tigers outscored the Aggies 24-12 in the third quarter to snag a double-digit lead. Slaughter’s stat line ballooned with 14 points on 5-6 shooting and 2-3 from deep, outscoring the Aggies in the quarter all by her lonesome. This third quarter success comes in a complete role-reversal from the last two games, where Mizzou consistently fell behind due to runs by top 25 opponents in Tennessee and LSU.

  • Next Up: The Tigers stay in the friendly confines of CoMo to face Kentucky on Thursday at 6:30pm, and then head to Oxford to face Ole Miss at 2pm on Sunday

Baseball

  • Recent Results: MIZ 7 — Stetson 9 | MIZ 11 — UConn 7 | MIZ 0 — Penn State 10
  • Top Performers thus far:

Brock Daniels: .400 BA | 10 AB | 5 R | 4 H | 2B | RBI | .500 slg%

Mateo Serna: .364 BA | 11 AB | 2 R | 4 H | 2B | HR | 4 RBI | .727 slg%

Ian Lohse: 2.25 ERA | 4 IP | 3 H | 1 ER | BB | 8 SO | .118 Opp BA

Rory & Matthew are deep in the weeds of baseball season as it gets kicked off. First up, some positional previews will conclude this week, and you can get all caught up above. Here’s a snippet from the Catcher outlook, since this position we should feel good about:

Catchers: This is a position Tigers fans can feel plenty of confidence in entering the 2025 season, returning nearly all of last season’s production with two solid contributors. Catcher might have the second highest floor of any position group on the team (behind corner infield), though its ceiling might be lower than some others.

  • Next Up— Mizzou heads to Orlando to face UCF on Wednesdays at 5:30pm on ESPN+ before heading to Vero Beach, Fla. to face Florida A&M at 7pm on Friday and Alabama State at 2pm on Saturday. On Sunday they will face Southern University at 8am.

Men’s Golf

  • Recent Results: John Burns Intercollegiate in Hawaii, 11th of 17 place (+14)

Per MU Tigers, Sophomore Brock Snyder had the best finish of his career thus far, placing 18th at the John Burns Intercollegiate Classic in Hawaii. He finished 2-under 208 over the three-day tournament. He bested his previous best 54-hole total by five strokes. The field included 7 teams ranked in the top 41.

Next Up: The Tigers will head to the Colleton River Challenge, hosted by Michigan State, on March 2-3 in Bluffton, SC.

Women’s Golf

  • Next Up: The Tigers head to Peoria, AZ for the Westbrook Invitational on Sunday to kick off their spring season.

Gymnastics

At the Zou to the Lou meet on Friday, the Tigers overcame a last place finish after a pretty disastrous first vault rotation to claw their way back into it and take the Valentine’s Day W from Alabama, who they beat for just the second time ever, Illinois (for a second straight week) and Iowa. It was a meet to remember, with good scores on beam and bars (including a career best 9.95 for Amari on bars), and the greatest floor rotation I’ve ever seen, which broke the school record of 49.700 they set last St. Patty’s Day at Illinois and currently is the second highest score in the entire country (a 49.725). Oh, and Railey set a new career high with a stunning 9.925, and Kennedy got a perfect 10. Amazing.

In my preview for the meet, I wished for four good rotations with season highs on 2/4 apparatuses— they got three good rotations and one season high, record-breaking event. I also wished for good vault landings (about that….), minimal wobbles on beam (YES!) and stuck landings (not entirely), a 49.500+ on floor (I’m Nostradamus, apparently), and to just be themselves (OF COURSE).

Lots to be happy about when the Tigers went to U of I for a Super Bowl Sunday Braggin’ Rights Dual, including a season-high tying team score (197.200), a season high on bars and a season-high tying floor rotation to go along with some great scores, including a career-high 9.90 for OU transfer Amy Wier on beam and some fabulous exhibition scores for Jessa Conedera (9.85 FX & 9.80 BB).

  • Next up: The Tigers head back home to Columbia to take on #11 Georgia at 7pm for “Hawaiian Night.”

Softball

  • Recent Results: MIZ 5 — Liberty 3 | MIZ 2 — SDSU 5 | MIZ 2 — Ohio St 7 | MIZ 10 — Clemson 10 | MIZ 1 — #8 FSU 9 in 6 innings | MIZ 5 — UCF 6 in 8 innings
  • Top Performers:

Julia Crenshaw has been on a mission to lead this offense. She was 2-5 with a run scored against UCF, 2-5 with a run, RBI & walk against Florida State, 2-4 with 2 runs, and RBI & walk vs. Clemson, 1-3 with a run scored & RBI against Liberty, and 1-2 with a run and walk against Ohio State.

Madison Walker had a few good performances, as she was 1-5 with a run scored & RBI against Clemson and 2-3 with two runs scored, two homers, and 3 RBI against Liberty.

Kara Daly had a couple good games, as she was 2-4 with 3 RBI and a run against UCF and 2-3 with a run scored against Liberty.

Stefania Abruscato had a few good games as well, going 1-2 with a run scored, 3 RBI and a walk against Clemson and was 2-2 with a run scored and a RBI against San Diego State.

Freshman Madison Uptegrove picked up her first (and second) collegiate hits when she went 2-3 with an RBI against San Diego State.

Perhaps the most important takeaway of the first weekend in this weekly-ish piece I collaborated with Dylan on? That Mizzou slayed its Duke Blue Devil demons when they beat them 10-3 in the second game of the season. Also important— Julia Crenshaw’s ascension to awesomeness (which has continued to the second weekend). I’ll also point out this from Dylan:

Ten separate Mizzou players scored a run, through a healthy combination of homers, hits, pinch running and any other way you can think of. While the top dogs are going to eat, talent permeates throughout the lineup, and that will play dividends come SEC play.

This is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a primer of sorts to tell you how Mizzou’s opponents did last year without having any games to go off of in the new season. It’s particularly useful as Mizzou plays like five teams a weekend. Part 1 ends with the final series leading up to the home opener in early March.

  • Next up: The Tigers head across the country to Cali for the Mary Nutter Classic. They’ll face Rutgers at 2:30pm and #5/6 UCLA on Thursday at 7pm, #20/19 Baylor at noon and Minnesota at 2:30pm on Friday, and #23 Oregon at 11:30am on Sunday.

Swimming & Diving

Rory finally got a chance to chat with Mizzou head coach Andrew Grevers ahead of the team’s second trek of the season to Athens, Ga., this time for the SEC Championships. What I like the most about this chat is that Grevers knows that it’s not about coming away from the meet as the top team standing; that’s just not going to happen when you’ve got David & Goliaths in the conference. But there’s lots they CAN do to make sure they’re ready to be the best they can be. I really love what he’s doing with the program as a former swimmer. Honestly, had he been the coach when I was coming into college, I think I might have stuck with swimming. He just GETS IT.

“As a program, we’ve decided not to necessarily focus on a final outcome because there’s so much that’s outside of our control in that scenario,” Grevers said. “So, as we put our energy and effort into focusing on things we can control. We want to get our hand on the wall in these close races. You know, touch out the competition every time we’re in a close race, right? We want to, ideally, squeak into the bottom of the heat, the bottom “A” final, the bottom of the “B” final, the bottom “C” final, trying to avoid being ninth place and 17th place and 25th place, right?”

On the importance of diving: “It’s a big deal. When you’re talking about the SEC, every single event matters. Every team knows how to step up in big events. And I suspect diving is going to make some noise there and get us some “A’ finals at that big meet,” he added.

Per MUTigers, here’s their medal watch:

On the men’s side: Collier Dyer is ranked second among SEC divers in 1-meter diving with an average optional score of 59.44. The junior also sits at fourth in platform diving with an average optional score of 60.63 and fifth in 3-meter diving with an average optional score of 62.78. Tommaso Zannella lands ninth in platform diving among league competition with an average optional score of 57.97. Jan Zubik stands at seventh in the 200 fly (1:41.47) entering the conference championship meet. Grant Bochenski’s 45.34 in the 100 back sits eighth amongst league competition. Alex Ochsenbein owns the tenth-fastest time in the 100 breast this season at 52.60.

On the women’s side: Gabriela San Juan Carmona ranks sixth amongst SEC competition in 3-meter diving pulling an average optional score of 50.31. Karolina Bank sits at tenth among the SEC field with a time of 59.81 in the 100 breast.

  • Next up: The swimming & diving squads will compete at the SEC Championships February 17-22 in Athens, Ga.

Tennis

  • Recent Results: Mizzou 4 — MO State 0 | Mizzou 4 — SEMO 0

Bianca Turati’s Tigers continue to do well in non-con season, coming away with another undefeated weekend with wins over fell Show Me State teams, MO State and SEMO.

Per MUTigers, Mary Brumfield & Andrea Artimedi won their doubles match 6-1, while Lailaa Bashir & Zoe Lazar won 6-4. Three Tigers – Inah Canete, Mary Brumfield & Zoe Lazar – also won their singles matches against the Bears. Against SEMO, Canete & Karina Roso won their doubles match 6-0, while Bashir & Lazar won 6-4. Gian Octa won her singles match, as did Bashir and Roso.

  • Next up: Tennis will face Lindenwood at home at 9:30am and Western Illinois at 3pm on Saturday and start SEC play against #21 Vanderbilt on Sunday at noon.

Track & Field

Since it was Valentine’s Day weekend, Abigail got sweet with some poetry for her recap. It’s so fun. Here’s a snippet:

Men’s Triple Jump:

Jonathan Seremes jumped 16.83m, which ranks second in the nation,

Who’s first you ask?

Also Seremes; a 16.94m result from an earlier occasion.

So while this meet saw slightly less success,

He’s still the nation’s first (and second) best.

As for Sterling Scott, the sophomore star,

He took third in 15.98m, slightly less far,

Than his season PB which eclipses 16

But, again, his ticket to nationals still looks pretty pristine.

There just aren’t a lot of Mizzou track enthusiasts like our own Abigail Klapatauskas, and the staff seems to love that she is here to provide coverage and will talk to her whenever she wants. In this update, she catches up with Coach Chamov about the jump team’s continued success and how it’s a byproduct of their work ethic and just the quality of people they are.

  • Next up: The SEC Indoor Championships February 27—March 1 in College Station, Texas

Wrestling

  • Next up: The Tigers’ final regular season dual is on February 22 against #13 Iowa State at home. Colton Hawks and Keegan O’Toole should be back by then!

Olympic Sports Photo Gallery

Cal took some shots of Mizzou’s game vs. Oklahoma on Sunday afternoon at Mizzou Arena, and I took a couple shots at the gymnastics meet in St. Charles!

Majority Rules

Now, with more swearing! It seems like ever since Quentin let go an F-bomb a few weeks ago, that every week we have another utterance of some “unsightly” word. This week it was two “s” words.

On this episode agenda: CoMo snow day predictions, WBB win over A&M and how that impacts the future, Softball’s 4-1 start, Baseball’s new uniforms and upcoming opener, Track’s record breakers, Men’s Golf progress, Tennis non-con domination, Tiger Gym’s Braggin Rights victory, Wrestling injury updates, and Volleyball roster updates. Join us!