51ºÚÁÏ

“I would challenge our fan base,� Drinkwitz said on Saturday afternoon. “The South Carolina game is not a sellout yet. So what are we waiting on? That’s going to be an opening SEC game, and it needs to be much more rowdy and much more raucous than the KU game.

“This is the SEC, and you’ve got a really good football team. We need everybody to show up, be early, be loud, create that home-field advantage that we know we can and take it to another level because we know it’s there.�

There’s part of me that hears Drinkwitz talking up the importance of this weekend’s SEC and likens it to a WWE wrestling “manager� promoting an upcoming pay-per-view event, serving as a hype man for his program and its 13-game home win streak.

Then again, I’d make the case that Drinkwitz didn’t even give the full sales pitch. Mizzou’s performance this weekend won’t just be a run-of-the-mill conference opener. It’s got the opportunity to serve as a tone-setting game for the rest of this season and begin to frame the national view of Mizzou this season in .

While the Tigers (3-0) enter this week ranked No. 23 in The Associated Press’ Top 25 poll, let’s not forget that they were picked 12th in the SEC this summer in the conference’s preseason media poll.

Twelfth.

In other words, the perception of this Mizzou program was that its closer to Vanderbilt, Arkansas and Kentucky than the conference’s blue bloods.

Meanwhile, South Carolina came in behind only Texas, Georgia, Alabama and LSU.

Yes, the same South Carolina that stole — heck, snatched — a late four-point win out of Mizzou hands last season in the other Columbia (South Carolina).

South Carolina (2-1, 0-1) enters this week teetering a bit following a 31-7 loss at home to Vanderbilt, a contest that saw South Carolina star quarterback knocked out of the game in the first half.

Sellers’ status remains uncertain for this weekend.

Regardless of whether Sellers plays, Mizzou needs to come into this week’s game on its home field like it smells blood in the water. If South Carolina needs this game to pick itself up off the mat, Mizzou should have the attitude that they’re going to jump on them quickly, shove this team back down on the mat and see if they can’t break their spirit.

The idea should be to send South Carolina spiraling to the point where folks out there start freaking out about their program. You definitely can’t be the get-right game for a team licking its wounds. It can’t be that.

Well, unless you’re embracing that prior perception.

Ahem.

Twelfth.

Mizzou knocked the snot out of Louisiana, as they should’ve. That game was interesting in that it came after the rivalry tilt with Kansas and before this SEC opener.

When I asked running back Ahmad Hardy why Mizzou was able to avoid a letdown, he offered an answer Mizzou fans had to love.

“We have relentless effort,� Hardy said right after a 250-yard, three-touchdown performance. “Every game, we treat it the same. We try and get better every single day. It don’t matter if we’re playing Kansas, South Carolina or the next. We coming in, we trying to win and we trying to get better every day.�

That’s a perfect mindset. Expressed exactly as you’d want.

Now, Mizzou has the chance to prove it in a big way in front of its home crowd. They get to prove that they’re not just one of those “other� programs in the SEC. They get to show that they plan to have real impact on how things shake out in the SEC, with games still to come against Alabama, Vanderbilt, Auburn, Texas A&M and Oklahoma.

Did I mention that Mizzou was picked to finish 12th in the conference?

I’m not saying Mizzou should be expected to roll through South Carolina. What I am saying is that this is a chance to make an early statement about where Mizzou stands as a program by bringing their A-game against a highly regarded opponent.

Are they going to rush for 400 yards for a second consecutive game? No. Not likely. Last week was the first time they’d reached that mark during Drinkwitz’s tenure.

One thing they can do is clean up the miscues and breakdowns in pass protection and give Beau Pribula a chance to show that he’s one of the more capable quarterbacks in a conference with some big-name signal callers.

South Carolina’s defensive front will present the biggest test so far.

A hat tip to senior center Connor Tollison for displaying a measure of leadership by putting the burden on himself to correct some of that after Saturday’s game.

“More of a communication thing on my end,� Tollison said of the key to improving the pass protection. “Just making sure everybody knows what they’re doing, like everybody knows their job and assignment and then just making the right call. I don’t know if I made the right call every time today. So I think just me being better, making betters calls will help out too.�

Defensively, the Tigers can prove that they’ve turned a corner after falling victim to multiple big plays against Kansas and the Jayhawks’ dynamic quarterback.

This coming Saturday night will provide a test of the Mizzou environment, as Drinkwitz already pointed out. It will also test whether this Mizzou football team has the ability to put its foot on the throat of a talented team that has recently stumbled.

As a whole, this weekend will give us our first clue whether or not Mizzou’s program has the swagger to stick it to all those folks who looked at it as a conference also-ran.