Former Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel and hip-hop artist Nelly have talked Missouri basketball over the phone this season.

On Feb. 9 Daniel tweeted, “Just got off the phone with @Nelly_Mo ….good to catch up with a Missouri native & such a huge @MizzouHoopsfan!”#SALUTE.” Nelly retweeted it that day.

“Nelly said it’s fun to watch them play,” Daniel said. “We talked for about 10 minutes, and he asked about Missouri basketball.”

Nelly, a St. Louis native, is cheering for the Tigers this season. On Jan. 12 he tweeted “S/O to MIZZOU way2ball can’t wait to come check yall out in person!!#STAYFOCUS.”

Daniel said Nelly has plans to attend the Missouri game against Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse on Feb. 25.

“He definitely mentioned he wanted to get out there to see them,” Daniel said.

Daniel and Nelly connected through Nelly’s business manager, who Daniel said he has been working with on “some stuff” concerning a website that Daniel estimates will be released in the next week.

Daniel attended Missouri’s game against Baylor last weekend, and said the student section stuck out to him most.

“The student section was wild and it’s really helping the team,” Daniel said. “I know how it helps on the football field, and it’s even more important in basketball because it’s right there and it’s so crazy.”

Missouri went 5-11 in Big 12 road games during Mike Anderson’s last two seasons as coach of the Tigers. Missouri has reversed that trend by going 4-2 in those games so far this season, but Anderson is not faring so well.

With Wednesday’s loss at Tennessee, Arkansas dropped to 0-6 in SEC road games, and 0-8 overall on the road. Bizarrely, the Razorbacks are 5-0 in SEC home games (Anderson’s Missouri teams were 13-3 in Big 12 home games the last two seasons). At 17-9, Arkansas has a chance to qualify for the NCAA tournament if it can win consistently in the final few weeks of the season.

The Utah Jazz (13-11) signed free agent and former Tiger DeMarre Carroll on Wednesday. He practiced with his new teammates on Thursday.

He signed with Memphis as a first round pick in 2009 and played 71 games his rookie season. Since then, however, he has only played 16 games with both Houston and Denver. The 6-foot-8 forward is shooting 40.8 percent in his two-year career in the NBA.

While playing for Missouri, Carroll earned 2008 Big 12 Newcomer of the Year, 2008 Big 12 All-Newcomer Team, 2008 Honorable Mention All-Big 12 and Most Valuable Player at the CBE Classic honors. In his last season as a Tiger, he averaged 13 points and and 6.7 rebounds. He played for Vanderbilt for two seasons before transferring to Missouri.

Nevin Shapiro, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for operating a Ponzi scheme, has been sending e-mails from prison regarding the University of Miami football program, as well as current Missouri head basketball coach Frank Haith, the Miami Herald reports.

Shapiro wrote in an e-mail that there is “proof of the cash payouts to Morton, with Haith’s knowledge.” Jake Morton was an assistant coach at Miami when Haith served as Miami’s head basketball coach.

The NCAA investigation is ongoing, but Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reports that the University of Miami “expects to hear from the NCAA by early summer.”

For those still interested in what the Big 12 Conference landscape will look like next football season, reports are circulating that questions surrounding West Virginia’s entry into the conference for 2012 will soon be resolved.
The Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail is reporting that an unnamed source says WVU’s early exit from the Big East Conference is no longer conditional upon Boise State joining the conference as a replacement in 2012. A resolution gives the Big East about $20 million, $11 million to be paid by the Mountaineers and the rest coming from the Big 12, according to the source, who said West Virginia would become a member of the Big 12 in July.
On Wednesday, CBSsports.com reported, citing football industry sources, that the settlement was contingent on the Big East getting a replacement for West Virginia for the 2012 season.
Meanwhile, despite word from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal on Thursday that Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt would be excited to see the Big 12 football schedule released on Friday, the Oklahoman’s Travis Haney reports it might take a little longer for everything to be finalized.

A win on Saturday against Baylor (12:30 p.m. at Mizzou Arena) would give seniors Marcus Denmon, Steve Moore and Kim English their 100th win in a Tiger uniform.

Their first win as a Tiger was against Praire View A&M on Nov. 15, 2008.

Missouri is currently a half-game ahead of Kansas and Baylor in the Big 12 conference standings. Kansas and Baylor play each other on Wednesday (7 p.m. on ESPN2). Depending on the outcome of that game, the Tigers could be playing for first place on Saturday.

Ricardo Ratliffe and Matt Pressey are also seniors, but they were junior-college transfers last year.

Previewing tonight’s Missouri-Oklahoma basketball game, Guerin Emig of the Tulsa World wrote an article this morning highlighting one of the stranger games ever played between the two teams, a rivalry spanning 208 games.

The game took place on Feb. 9, 1989, a game in which Missouri lost to Oklahoma 112-105. However, as exciting as the final score may seem, it was the events that were left out of the boxscore that made the game memorable.

Missouri jumped out to a 23-8 lead that night, which led Oklahoma coach Billy Tubbs to pull a humorous stunt that still has people talking today, as evidenced by Emig’s article and a first half feature during ESPNU’s broadcast of the game tonight.

The Oklahoma crowd, upset by the officiating in the game as well as the score, started to throw objects onto the court. One of the referees for the night, Ed Hightower, commanded Tubbs to settle the crowd down or else he would give Oklahoma a technical foul. Tubbs, followed Hightower’s instructions and grabbed the microphone from the PA table to address the crowd.

“The referees have requested that regardless of how terrible the officiating, do not throw …”

The crowd drowned out the rest of Tubb’s message as Hightower proceeded to give Tubb’s a technical foul.

However, Tubb’s stunt inspired the Oklahoma players, as they proceeded to go on a 28-9 run and eventually win the game.

There is no question that Missouri’s athletic profile is on the rise nationally. Missouri has been in national sporting news a lot lately, whether it be for the Tiger’s move to the SEC, their basketball teams success this season or Dorial Green-Beckham’s recent decision, choosing Missouri for his football services.

However, as many Missouri fans may know, their success on and off the playing field have not come without devastating defeats.

In recent years, the Missouri’s football and basketball teams have lost several games immediately after big wins. First, there was the 2007 football team. On Nov. 24 of that year, the Tigers defeated the Kansas Jayhawks 36-18 in one of the biggest victories in program history. The next week, the Tigers, who were ranked No. 1 and were one win away from the National Championship Game, lost to the Oklahoma Sooners in the Big 12 Championship Game 38-17.

Then, in 2010, the football team once again had a program-defining win, beating No. 1 Oklahoma 36-27 at home in front of a national audience as part of “College Gameday”. The Tiger’s were undefeated (7-0) and primed to go to their first BCS Bowl game. However, the Tigers lost their next two games at Nebraska and Texas Tech and ended up settling with an Insight Bowl loss to Iowa, finishing the year 10-3.

Up to tonight, this year’s Missouri basketball team has followed a similar pattern. Undefeated going into Big 12 play, the Tigers stomped Oklahoma by 38 points 87-49 to start off the Big 12 season. However, the very next game, the Tiger’s went to Kansas State and lost their first game of the season to the Wildcats, 75-59.

Even more devastating, Missouri lost to Oklahoma State on Jan. 25, 79-72 just days after defeating then No. 3 Baylor and moving to No. 2 in the national rankings.

However, if tonight’s win against Oklahoma is any indicator, the Tiger’s may have reversed their recent trend of losing a game after a big win.

The Tiger’s squeaked by Oklahoma 71-68, in which the Sooners missed a three to tie the game as time expired. It wasn’t pretty, but the Tigers temporarily reversed their recent trend by winning the next game after Saturday night’s come from behind victory against Kansas, 74-71.

Bill Self said that he was impressed by the “classy” atmosphere at Mizzou Arena on Saturday, and that he could see Missouri and Kansas playing again years down the road — just not anytime soon.

“They chose to be somewhere else, and that’s fine,” Self said. “But when you choose to be somewhere else, you leave a situation behind that’s not the same as when you were in it. Right now it’s not gonna happen.”

He also said that he doesn’t feel bad for fans on either side that the 104-year old rivalry won’t continue past this season.

“I don’t feel bad,” Self said. “Missouri wanted this, so why should I feel bad? If anybody should feel bad for anybody it’s the players who won’t get a chance to play in it. Not the fans.”

Even though he is new to the rivalry, Missouri coach Frank Haith doesn’t feel the same way.

“It’d be a shame,” Haith said. “Not just for our fans, but for everybody. It’s a great game to have us play. Hopefully we can work something out.”

During ESPN “College Gameday” on Saturday morning at Mizzou Arena, the analysts of the show posed the question of who Missouri’s rival will be in the SEC. They couldn’t come up with a good answer, but the estimated 5,000 Missouri fans in attendance seemed to feel unanimously that their new rival should be Arkansas. Fans screamed “Arkansas!” when the question was asked, and seconds later a chant of “Are-Kansas” started up.

The fact that Arkansas can’t be spelled without “kansas” isn’t the only reason that fans think the Razorbacks would make a good rival. Arkansas coach Mike Anderson bolted from Missouri last season after five years in Columbia, leaving many fans feeling pessimistic about the future of Missouri basketball and bitterness towards Arkansas.

The two schools also clashed this past month in the recruitment of top-rated football player Dorial Green-Beckham. DGB was thought to be headed to Arkansas until Missouri seemingly won him over during a visit the weekend before signing day.

Because they are in different divisions in football, Arkansas and Missouri will only meet on the football field about once every six years. But they’ll play at least once every year in basketball, which could give way to a new version of the Border War.