Mizzou Football Wins Regular Season Finale


Ben Krakow
The Missouri Football team won their final game of the regular season on Friday afternoon over Arkansas, 48-45, at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville. On a seasonably warm afternoon in Fayetteville, both teams had their offenses working early in this one.
The teams combined to score 59 points in the first 30 minutes of action as big plays were the theme of the first half. The Missouri offense finished with 696 yards of offense on the day.
Missouri quarterback Drew Lock threw two 50+ yard touchdowns to Emanuel Hall, who later left the game with a hamstring injury. Lock also threw two touchdowns to tight end Albert Okwuegbunam. The redshirt freshman tight end now has 11 touchdown catches on the season
Lock finished the day with five touchdown passes and 448 passing yards. The junior quarterback now has 43 touchdown passes on the season which is a single-season SEC record.
Missouri running back Ish Witter had 170 rushing yards along with a touchdown of his own.
Wide Reciever J’Mon Moore finished with 160 receiving yards and a touchdown while Hall had 111 receiving yards and two touchdowns himself.
While the offense shined for Missouri, the defense had major difficulty slowing down the Razorbacks especially in the first half when Arkansas scored 28 points. The Razorbacks scoring plays included a 57-yard touchdown pass and touchdown runs of 24, 22 and 16 yards.
After serious struggles his freshman year, Missouri kicker Tucker McCann has responded in his sophomore year by making his last 10 field goals including a 19-yard field goal with five seconds left to win the game on Friday. McCann is now 14 of 16 on field goal attempts this season.
Immediately after the game, Arkansas fired head coach Bret Bielema. Bielema had been the head coach in Fayetteville since 2013 after previously serving as the head coach at Wisconsin. The Razorbacks struggled this season finishing with a 4-8 record including 1-7 in SEC play which landed them in last place in the SEC west division. The Razorbacks will not be invited to a bowl game this season.
The Tigers started the season 1-5 including 0-4 in SEC play, but they rallied to win their last 6 games finishing at 7-5 with a 4-4 record in SEC play. The Tigers will now find out which bowl they will be invited to with the most likely bowl invitations coming from either the Liberty Bowl in Memphis or the Texas Bowl in Houston. Either of those bowl games would have the Tigers matching up against a Big 12 conference opponent. Missouri was a part of the Big 12 conference until 2012.

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