What Missouri, South Carolina Said After Tigers Enjoy 34-12 Homecoming Win

Mizzou retained the Mayor's Cup with its fifth straight win over South Carolina and improved its all-time homecoming record to 67-40-5.

Here's what was said after Missouri football's 34-12 homecoming victory against South Carolina on Saturday afternoon.   

Eliah Drinkwitz 

Missouri head coach

“What a big time win by our football team and program. Appreciative of the crowd, I thought they were just unbelievable. What a great energetic atmosphere, I thought the students were unbelievable. They were there early and loud and really felt like our guys needed some energy going into this game. We’ve been going since July 30th and this has been eight straight weeks plus those four weeks. We needed this bye-week and I was worried about getting to this finish line. Proud of the seniors and our leaders for playing with a lot of courage and energy and thankful for the fans. It’s always good to win homecoming, when you invent homecoming. Appreciated our team and then to keep the Mayor’s Cup in the real Columbia, that’s always something special too. So, hats off to our defense, I thought Coach Baker did an outstanding job getting after them defensively and to hold them to four field goals I think was incredible. Especially after the drop punt to go out there and run to the fight the way they did and hold them to only a field goal was really impressive.” 

On the first half:

“The only thing I was worried about was them looking ahead to the bye-week, looking to the day off as much as anything. But, really proud of the energy they had in the first half, offensively to come out and score on three of the first four possessions, defensively to go out there and really stuff them all the way up until halftime, I thought was really good.”

On running back Cody Schrader:

“We have a lot of trust in him, and felt like he continues to earn the opportunity with the way he’s producing with the ball in his hands. He’s got a really limited stuff rate. He doesn’t have negative yardage runs, plus his combination of what he does in protections, our plan was to play a little bit of Jamal Roberts in this game and just didn’t get it done. But, we’ll see what happens to the bye-week.” 

On adjustments after first offensive possession:

“I thought we had a pretty good rhythm offensively, they started out in a lot of man to man, and came out in Cover 2 that first series. Kirby did a really good job of adjusting and anytime they play two safeties on the roof, you got to run the ball a little bit. Then we were able to get them into their quarters look and hit Luther over the top. It was a really good sequence there by Coach Moore.” 

On Mizzou’s 7-1 record:

“We’re focused on the task at hand and that’s really been why our team has been so effective and we haven’t looked ahead to anything. Everybody else is… we are not. Our team and our seniors have been focused on a 1-0 mentality. We need to beat the bye-week. We need to make sure we get rested up. We need to recover and then we’ll figure out what we got to do in November.” 

On the team playing well in October: 

 “Yeah, don’t peak too soon, is what I say. In college football it’s really easy for the fans to look at the schedule and say, Okay, we're gonna get this, we're gonna get that, but in that locker room, it's hard. I mean, you're physically beat up. You're physically worn out. You got so many tests and midterms. You got stuff back at home. You're dealing with all kinds of stuff, mentally and physically. Our guys are not even in the frame of mind to think about Georgia.” 

Cody Schrader

Missouri running back

“It was just a huge team win. I think the defense showed up huge and let up no touchdowns and when they are that dominant on defense, we just got to do our job on offense. Take some clock out, score touchdowns and the defense kind of put it away for us.” 

On his workload:

“That's something I've always prided myself on throughout my football career. Being able to be durable and to be able to take those handoffs with the team needs me to do it.” 

On the team’s road ahead:

“Everything we want is right in front of us and he's gonna keep taking care of business, and I think we have got to keep replicating that process to how we can be successful because there’s so much that we still got to improve on and I think that's the beautiful part about playing football is that you're never going to be where you want to be.”

Chuck Hicks

Missouri linebacker

“It was fun. It was exciting because at the end of the day we are playing for a trophy. So I feel like it means so much more when you are playing for something like that. It gave us all the motivation in the world.” On what is clicking for the defense… “It’s communication; that’s all we have to do. We do our jobs and communication breeds confidence. I feel like we have been emphasizing that all year. We are just talking about the game, what we are doing, and what they are doing and I think that is what helped us.” 

Can we talk about Georgia now?

“It is exciting, it is our next game so that is the most important of course. The bye week is going to allow us to get healed up and anyone banged to get treatment to get right. We are up for our next challenge and it is going to be a great game.”

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Shane Beamer

South Carolina head coach

“Obviously we knew that coming into the game but didn’t play great in the first half early with just some self inflicted things, drop pass a couple of pre snap penalties on both sides of the ball. You know we had plenty of opportunities. We didn't play well enough in the first half, didn’t coach well enough in the first half, but we had opportunities to win, make plays, and we didn’t get that done. Proud of the way that our guys came out in the second half. The leadership that we saw at halftime, that’s what we need because right now we’re facing a lot of adversity to say the least, records not where it wants to be, and with our injury situation, it’s just not ideal.” On leadership in the first half… “Something started with me as the head coach. We were ready to play, that's the thing. We had a fantastic week of practice. And these kids care. They care about one another and they care about this football program.” 

Spencer Rattler

South Carolina quarterback

“We started off the first half as a group, but it wasn't good enough and we know that. Credits to Missouri, they did an outstanding job scheming up against us and they got great players. Coach Drinkwitz does a great job with what they're doing on defense. We shot ourselves in the foot a lot in the first half and weren't converting on third down enough. It was tough with their blitz plan, but in the second half we had a lot of chances to finish down there in the red zone, and we just just couldn't get it done. I gotta be better down there. We all got to be better. But, we're gonna get back to work and try to be better in those clutch moments when we need it.”

Five Takeaways From Missouri's Dominant Win Over South Carolina