KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Tigers learned around 5:30 p.m. Monday that their Saturday opponent would change from Arkansas to Vanderbilt.
Although thankful to the Southeastern Conference for the new competitor, Head Coach Eli Drinkwitz said it’s not ideal to have to switch that late.
“We were pretty much done with our game plan versus the other team that we were going to play and now we’re focused in on Vanderbilt,” Drinkwitz said.
During his media availability on Tuesday, Drinkwitz gave credit to Arkansas Head Football coach Sam Pittman for contacting him before the game’s postponement. Pittman called Drinkwitz Monday morning about the Razorback roster struggles.
The Mizzou-Vanderbilt game was originally scheduled for Oct. 17, but was postponed because of Vanderbilt’s COVID-19 cases and quarantines within the football program.
Drinkwitz said their previous game plan for the Commodores won’t work this time around.
“As far as carryover, they’ve played four games since the COVID," he said. "So you try to go back and watch and say, 'OK, they played two or maybe three before we played them,' I think it was two, and then the other four. There’s not really a ton that carries over. You wish it did, but it doesn’t.”
On Sunday, the Mizzou football team had zero positive COVID-19 tests but will have more tests taken Tuesday with results available Thursday.
“There is always a tremendous amount of nerves when you travel, and so I think we’re just waiting to see how that plays out," Drinkwitz said. "We should get some guys back today to practice and some guys off of the COVID, some guys back.The roster we turned into the SEC for this week’s game was 59."
The make-up game will be played at noon on Saturday in Columbia.