On Oct. 11, the Missouri Tigers resembled anything but the Eastern Division champions of the Southeastern Conference.
In a lunchtime matchup against Georgia, the Tigers turned the ball over five times in a humiliating 34-0 home loss. The setback dropped Missouri to 1-1 in league play and seemed to justify how the Tigers could lose a late-September home game to Indiana, which wound up 4-8 overall and 1-7 in the Big Ten.
Georgia dealt Missouri its first shutout loss in 12 years.
"We've come really far since then," Tigers defensive end Markus Golden said. "The leaders pulled everybody together after that game and let everybody know that we couldn't let that one game define our whole season. The whole team took pride in wanting to fix it, and we told ourselves that all our goals were still ahead of us."
Since that debacle, Missouri has knocked off six consecutive SEC foes to post a second straight 7-1 league mark and a date with No. 1 Alabama this Saturday in the Georgia Dome. Georgia assumed control of the East after thrashing the Tigers but lost it three weeks later, when Florida upset the Bulldogs 38-20 in Jacksonville.
Georgia's dominance of Missouri was reflected by the statistics, as the Bulldogs had 379 yards behind freshman Nick Chubb's 38-carry, 143-yard performance, while the Tigers were held to 147 yards.
"We turned the ball over five times, and any time you have that many turnovers, it's going to be difficult to win any games," Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. "Georgia played well, and I think that's important to understand, but what we did after that as a football team is realize that there was certainly a sense of urgency that we had to go through and to take it one game at a time.
Missouri defensive end Markus Golden and the rest of the Tigers had a difficult time corralling Georgia tailback Nick Chubb during a 34-0 Bulldogs victory on Oct. 11."We knew we had to get better, and it's just been a determination by a lot of guys. I think we're a lot better football team now than we were then."
Missouri had a completely different experience the week after the Georgia loss, throttling an imploding Florida 42-13. Marcus Murphy returned the opening kickoff 96 yards for a touchdown and had an 82-yard punt return for a score early in the third quarter, and the Tigers also reached the end zone on a 21-yard fumble return by Golden and a 46-yard interception return by Darvin Ruise.
The Tigers then had to grind through 24-14 and 20-10 home victories over Vanderbilt and Kentucky to get to 4-1 in league play before an open date. Which is why Missouri receiver Bud Sasser used "gradual" to describe the march to Atlanta after the loss to Georgia.
"We weren't exactly hitting on all cylinders even after that game," Sasser said. "What we did was continue to improve each week, and we didn't worry about what was being said about us outside of our program. We just tried to make sure that we stayed together and worked hard each week to make improvements."
Missouri had a three-game closing stretch against Texas A&M, Tennessee and Arkansas. The Tigers trailed in all three games, including a third-quarter deficit at Texas A&M and a fourth-quarter deficit against Arkansas, yet pulled the sweep to clinch the division crown.
The Tigers finished No. 5 last season in the Associated Press poll after capping a 12-2 year with a Cotton Bowl victory over Oklahoma State. They began this season at No. 24 and are No. 14 this week, but they were nowhere to be found after their loss to Georgia.
A loss that apparently changed everything.
"That was definitely one of the rougher games I've ever been a part of," senior offensive lineman Mitch Morse said, "but as a team, that was kind of a defining moment for us. There were two ways we could have gone about that. We could have quit and scrapped all the work we had put in to that point, or we could have rededicated ourselves to the program. We rededicated ourselves in practice to the fundamentals and techniques, and it was honestly a blessing in disguise.
"We brought a whole new enthusiasm for the game. We wanted to rededicate ourselves, and that's what we were able to do, and it showed the resiliency of this football team."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.