'Ignore the Noise': Missouri Tigers Coach Eli Drinkwitz Speaks on Team's '1-0' Georgia Approach

Missouri Tigers head coach Eli Drinkwitz has urged his team to not pay attention to the outside noise ahead of the his team's toughest matchup of the season against top-ranked Georgia.

The No. 14 Missouri Tigers will have their biggest test of the 2023 season this Saturday against No. 1 Georgia. If Missouri were to win on Saturday, it would be the team's first win over the Associated Press' top ranked team in program history. Despite the high stakes, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz has stressed to his team the importance of ignoring any outside noise when the team travels down to Athens.

"We need to focus not so much on the external challenges that this team poses but we really need to focus on what we can control which is our play, our execution, our fundamentals and execute the plan the very best we can," Drinkwitz said during Tuesday's press conference. "We need to ignore the noise this week, focus on the things we can control."

In 2022, Georgia's smallest margin of victory in their undefeated season came in a 26-22 win over Missouri at Faurot Field. The Tigers led the Bulldogs up until the final four minutes. Though the close loss grabbed the attention of the national media, Missouri isn't taking any moral victories from last year's performance.

"I don’t really take anything from last year’s game," Drinkwitz said. "We’re two totally different teams. This is a new matchup, so I don’t really take much from it at all."

Saturday's game provides 7-1 Missouri the opportunity to take the lead of the SEC East division and control their destiny throughout the rest of the 2023 season. The Tigers have not won the division since the 2014 season where they finished the regular season with a 10-2 record. Even with the stakes at hand, Drinkwitz has urged the team to not pay attention to any narratives that might be created following the game.

"Regardless after the game, it’s not anything that we can control but there is going to be two different narratives," Drinkwitz said. "The narrative is going to be if we lost, the season’s over and there’s nothing left to play for because of what was at stake in the game, which we know is not true."

"If we win, we’re going to be assumed that we’re going to win the East which is not true because we still have three games left against SEC opponents," Drinkwtiz added. "The job of the media and social media is to create narratives. Our job is to ignore them and try to be 1-0."

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