SB Nation's Mizzou and Illinois blogs, Rock M Nation and Hail to the Orange, are both predictably excited about tonight's Braggin' Rights game—the 30th annual—and both have a lot to say about it. But as ostensibly impartial bystanders, we at SB Nation St. Louis—we've graciously allowed the Scottrade Center to be used—find it most interesting to get our Mizzou analysis from our Illinois blog, and vice versa.
↵Rock M Nation's Fighting Illini coverage has some great statistical analysis available. They're gracious enough to see Illinois's recent loss to their little brothers at Illinois-Chicago as an outlier, and Bill C. considers things too close to call, even though—given both team's predilection for running and interesting basketball—the score might not end up particularly close. If the Tigers win, he says, picking "the good guys" because his prediction "doesn't count for anything", they'll win by a score of something like 84-76.
↵Hail to the Orange suggests that this is a turning point for Illiois—"a chance to either reclaim the confidence we knew just last week or start reliving the nightmares of last year"—but no pressure, guys! One thing has changed since their last missive: Sophomore Brandon Paul could be back. He's started practicing again after an ankle injury on Saturday. For more on Illinois, while I'm plugging the network, it's worth checking out our new blog on Big 10 basketball, BT Powerhouse.
↵Me? Well, I went to Mizzou and didn't get into Illinois. Fake-journalistic propriety dictates that I oughtn't answer.
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