After Missouri’s 75-70 Tennessee win on Saturday, former Missouri player and the true son from Baltimore, Maryland posted how proud he is of this year’s team on Power Mizzou, live from Italy. And, you know what, instead of bitching and moaning and complaining about this team’s deficiencies (which are obvious at times), we should be happy where we are…18-7 and on the NCAA bubble after replacing four starters in back-to-back seasons and its top five scorers in 2011-12 and four of its top five scorers in 2012-13.

Maybe, Kimmie is on to something here when he offers his insight:

This team ever since the game at Vanderbilt has done nothing but impress me. There are more reasons for them to be bad than it is for them to be good. I’m a proud, proud, proud alum watching them battle.

I mean they’ve seen adversity after adversity, been criticized and talked about and they’ve done nothing but went to work every day and became a better team who understands what they are. When I say they are a less talented Oklahoma City Thunder team, they’ll be 3 ppl on here with no clue about the NBA that will say I’m saying Jordan is like Westbrook and Jabari Like Durant.

The thunder understand how they need to succeed. Mizzou is figuring it out in front of our eyes. Oklahoma city knows that Westbrook, Durant and Harden (2 years ago) had to take all the shots. Those 3 (Ross, Brown, JC) are much better and more consistent options than throwing in the post. They get paint points by transition drives, and few other ways ill mention below. Thabo Sefalosha, Perkins, Collison, Ibaka (at that time) got their points by crashing the glass, running the floor and finishing dump offs. Keanu, Torren, JWIII and Ryan are trying their very best to assimilate into those very taxing rolls. It’s hard for big men to feel good about playing tough D when they don’t get a ton of touches. We had to constantly keep Ricardo happy with touches so he would not stop battling for us. Maybe I’m getting off topic.

But I’m just so proud of their resilience to focus on next play, next stop, next possession and not dwell on mistakes that can’t be changed. (Torren’s chase down block after Jordan’s turnover, Jabari’s INT after Earnest’s TO, Being able to adjust to finishing the game in a 2-3 when foul trouble and KILLER bigs took us out of our 3-2. Im just so proud of coach Haith. He has had to coach 3 COMPLETELY different teams in 3 seasons. Had to get to know these guys in no time and he’s done nothing but 30+23+18 and counting wins in less than 3 years. He’s shown his unique ability to not be a stubborn coach that will never adjust what he does. He adapts to the players he has and who has a game going.

Man I am proud of this bunch. If the 2013 team had this teams sense of togetherness. They could’ve been special. So proud of them. Most of all for Jabari. He texted me after they beat Ark and said “that was for you”…and then I saw in the Tribune he mentioned our talks late nights at our neighboring lockers. My biggest regret from college was that my senior year…we had no freshmen to pass/teach and pass the torch to. No young guys to teach the Missouri way. (Teach them to sleep in the gym (seriously corny but true), Come early, stay late, come close to blows during pick up games because of the 7 game series, Teach them that we call taxis if we drink at the bars, Teach them how hard you have to work to be successful at basketball). We didn’t have any freshmen to teach that too. We taught it to Phil and Mike Dixon… Green, Kreklow, Underwood, Stone all left. Once Mike left and Phil declared I was afraid we left nothing behind. But watching JB has made me see that we did have a freshman. He was just in a valeur sweat suit. He watched us, he listened to us, and he is playing way better than any of us. I think he’s the best Tiger in a long, long time.