Confidence. That's what oozed on Tuesday night as Mizzou romped all over Iowa State.

Missouri is 1-6 in games decided by 7 points or less. There are many causes: coaching, personnel, execution, confidence, luck. How many of those games would never have come down to a close loss had the Tigers just been a little more confident? Last night, it seemed everything they threw up was going to go down. Kalen Grimes went hard to the basket instead of sending up a wimpy fadeaway.

We've all seen that kid on youth teams. The kid that's a head taller than everyone else, but doesn't impact the game because they're tentative and don't know their own abilities. That's Kalen. I don't think he understands what a force he can be under the basket. Maybe he does now.

This is the Tigers I saw earlier in the season. They played together, loose and smart.

KU's going to run into a buzzsaw.