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Published Oct 8, 2024
Scouting Report: UMass
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Kyle McAreavy  â€¢  Mizzou Today
Senior Editor
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Missouri needs to rebound and it needs to start trending upward quickly if it wants to still be considered a playoff team.

The Tigers got lucky last week that there was a lot of other chaos around college football to dull the national sting of the beatdown they got from Texas A&M, but they did drop 12 spots in the AP poll to 21.

But they’re lucky again that they’ve got a perfect get-right opponent this week.

Umass (1-5) enters having lost its past two games and with only a comeback win against Central Connecticut State to keep the ‘W’ column in its record from being a 0.

After starting the season with losses to Eastern Michigan, Toledo and Buffalo in which the Minutemen didn’t look very competitive, they have played better the past three games starting with the win against Central Connecticut State, then tying three times before ultimately losing to Miami (Oh.) and going into halftime up 13-7 against Northern Illinois before giving up 21 of the game’s final 28 points to lose 34-20.

Missouri opened the week as a 28-point favorite.

Here’s a glance at UMass and what the Tigers will see at 11 a.m. Saturday:


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GAME INFO

When: 11 a.m. CT, Saturday

Where: McGuirk Alumni Stadium, Amherst, Mass.

TV: ESPN2

Radio: Tiger Radio Network

SERIES HISTORY

This will be the first matchup between the programs. Missouri will host UMass next season to complete a home-and-home agreement made in 2019. UMass is 0-11 against SEC teams.

UMASS STATS

Scoring offense: 19.17 per game (117th nationally)

Scoring defense: 31.33 per game (106th nationally)

Rushing offense: 133.0 per game (93rd nationally)

Rushing defense: 161.8 per game (92nd nationally)

Passing offense: 213.33 per game (85th nationally)

Passing defense: 162.33 per game (19th nationally)

KEY PLAYERS

OFFENSE

Taisun Phommachanh, QB

The 6-foot-4, 220-pound redshirt senior who has spent time at both Georgia Tech (two games in 2022) and Clemson (13 games across 2019-2021) has completed 104-of-181 (57.46 percent) of his passes for 1,280 yards and seven touchdowns, while tossing nine interceptions. He is 36th in the country in passing yards and averages 213.33 per game.

He is also the Minutemen’s leading rusher with 86 carries for 253 yards (2.9 yards per carry) and a score.

His best games were at Toledo and against Central Connecticut State. At Toledo, he completed 26-of-40 passes for 259 yards with a touchdown and an interception, while rushing for 73 yards on 17 carries with a score.

Against Central Connecticut State he was 20-of-29 passing (690 percent) for 287 yards and three touchdowns to go with one interception and 47 yards on nine carries on the ground.

He comes in having completed 15-of-31 passes (48.4 percent) for 268 yards and two touchdowns against Northern Illinois, he also rushed for 51 yards on nine attempts.

Jakobie Keeney-James, WR

The 6-1, 195-pound graduate student who played at Eastern Washington the past five seasons, has absorbed more than a third of the Minutemen’s total receiving yards.

He leads the team with 24 catches for 493 yards (20.54 yards per catch) and three touchdowns.

The next highest yardage total on the team is 193 and the next highest catch total is 17.

His best games came at Toledo and at Miami (OH.). At Toledo, he caught 6-of-9 targets for 93 yards and a touchdown, while he caught 4-of-8 targets for 150 yards and a score against Miami (OH.).

Most recently against Northern Illinois, he had four catches on five targets for 87 yards. UMass likes to target him down the field as 16 of his catches and 415 of his yards came on passes where the ball traveled at least 10 yards in the air.


DEFENSE

Jalen Stewart, LB

The 6-0, 230-pound senior leads the team with 37 total tackles, including 15 solo. He also has one tackle for loss and 0.5 sacks to go with two batted passes.


Arsheen Jiles, CB

The 5-9, 195-pound graduate student who spent the past four seasons at Sacred Heart University leads the team with 2.5 tackles for loss while totaling 21 tackles, including 12 solo. He has batted down two passes and has one quarterback hit.


KEY MATCHUPS

Brady Cook vs. the secondary

After struggling to find much success against Texas A&M, Cook will need to take advantage of a lesser opponent to get rolling through the air in a way he hasn’t yet this season. UMass’ pass yards allowed is it’s best stat compared to other teams, but I think that is more based on game script as they have been behind a lot and teams have been able to run the ball effectively against them

Missouri is averaging only 249.8 yards through the air through five games compared to 304.4 through five games last season. The Tigers will have the talent advantage at basically every position, the question will be how well they are able to take advantage of that.


Line of scrimmage

Missouri got dominated on both sides of the line of scrimmage against Texas A&M, now the Tigers have a chance to be the dominant ones. Even low-level starting SEC linemen should be able to enforce their will against a 1-5 independent team. So this will be a good opportunity for the Tigers to find some cohesion and see some success on the field among two groups that really struggled last week.


Head on over to the Tiger Walk to discuss this week’s game and so much more.

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