Last season, Mike Anderson's frenetic Missouri Tigers basketball team sneaked up on the college basketball world. The Tigers didn't receive a vote in the AP's preseason poll and were picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 by the coaches before the season. Mizzou didn't crack the AP poll until Dec. 22, at which point the Tigers were 9-1. Ultimately, Mizzou finished third in the Big 12 with a 12-4 record, won the postseason conference tournament, advanced to the Elite Eight and was ninth in the final AP poll.

It was quite a ride, arguably the best men's basketball season in school history. What could the squad possibly do for an encore?

Tiger head coach Mike Anderson began his offseason by agreeing to a seven-year extension with Missouri that could be worth as much as $15.4 million. This was after Anderson was mentioned as a candidate to fill coaching vacancies near and far, most notably at Alabama, Georgia and Memphis. He then had a rough time in the recruiting game, safely delivering Michael Dixon to Columbia, but losing Keith DeWitt to eligibility issues and missing out on prize JUCO recruit Jarrid Famous, who ended up at South Florida and is proving to be a force in the lane in the powerful Big East.

Add to those bumps in the road the graduations of the Tigers' three leading scorers from last season — DeMarre Carroll, Leo Lyons and Matt Lawrence — and you have another Mizzou squad playing with limited expectation. Once again Mizzou received scant recognition in the AP preseason voting. Once again the coaches picked Anderson's squad to finish seventh in the Big 12.

This is a team in need of an infusion of respect.

Last year, I penned a coda for the Tigers' terrific 2008-09 season at my old blog for The Kansas City Star. Here are the benchmarks I outlined on my "to-do" list for this season:

2008 Team: 117.8 Offensive Rating; 89.0 Defensive Rating

These numbers simply express how many points the Tigers scored and allowed per 100 possessions last season. Their offensive rating was good for eighth in the country, while Mizzou was 14th defensively. Those are lofty figures indeed. So where are we so far in 2009-10?

Through Saturday's loss at Oklahoma, Mizzou has posted an Offensive Rating of 110.3, according to KenPom.com, good for 45th in the nation. Considering there are 347 teams in Division I, that's pretty good. But conference brethren Kansas (3rd), Baylor (11th), Texas (13th), Kansas State (17th) and Colorado (40th) have all posted better numbers thus far in the campaign.

On defense, Missouri's 85.6 Defensive Rating is the fourth-best figure in the country. Alas, two of the three teams ahead of the Tigers reside in the Big 12: Texas (1st) and Kansas (3rd). (Florida State is the gate-crasher.) Suffice to say, there is some pretty good defense being played in the conference.

If you want to extract per-possession margins from these numbers, you can see that last year's Tiger team outscored opponents by .29 points per trip in 2008-09. This season, that figure is .25. So the margin of error is just a little bit smaller for Mizzou, but not by much. For all intents and purposes, Missouri is just as good this season as they were a season ago. That statement might come as a stunning revelation to those not paying attention and, judging by the polls, there are plenty who fit that description.

Missouri has ranked in the top 10 in the rankings at KenPom.com for most of this season and currently sits at 12th. Ken Pomeroy is an affable college basketball stat guru (and weather expert) based in Salt Lake City. His system for rating teams has proven uncannily accurate over the last few years, garnering him the spotlight in high-profile outlets like USA Today and The New York Times. His system, in a nutshell, adjusts those per-possession ratings that I alluded to for Mizzou according the quality of opponents a team has played.

The end result is a schedule-adjusted winning percentage built off a team's tempo-free point differential. It's a great way to judge the true strength of teams beyond the raw numbers quoted in so many other places. Careful attention to the Pomeroy ratings can help you spot pretenders and contenders long before they are exposed. (It's also a handy reference when filling out those tournament brackets come March.) Last season, Mizzou hit the top 10 in the Pomeroy rankings well before they started to gain the attention of the pollsters. In the end Pomeroy was proved right.

Has Pomeroy nailed the Tigers again? We won't know that for sure for a few weeks, but it seems likely that Missouri is significantly better than its national perception. That's not to say there aren't issues to be addressed.

The decline on the offensive end was to be expected given the loss of the players already mentioned off last season's roster. However, a new pecking order hasn't really been established with this year's team. Sophomore Kim English has seized a larger role, taking a third of available shots while on the floor this year after taking a quarter of Mizzou's shots during his court time last season. English has managed to improve his efficiency despite the larger role, producing 1.8 more points per 100 possessions than he did as a freshman. English has emerged as the go-to player for the Tigers, but nevertheless, when Mizzou hits a dry spell it's often because English is not getting enough touches.

That was evident in the loss to the Sooners. Anderson does not run specific plays for specific players ordinarily, instead relying on the hyper-motion, ball-movement, drive-and-kick attack that works so well at times. There are three things to watch for as Mizzou hits the meat of its schedule and they all involve English. If these three things can be improved upon, Missouri's offense will be much less prone to stagnation.

First of all, when the base offense is not producing good looks — and this will happen against Texas, Kansas and in the return match with Kansas State — Mizzou needs to run sets that isolate English in threatening spots on the floor. We're not talking about one-on-one basketball. We're just talking about giving English screens and creating driving lanes in order to maximize his ability to get the ball to the hoop. Too often now, when Mizzou is starved for points, English will put the ball on the floor only to find himself crowded by the defenders of teammates.

Second, English needs to be a better playmaker. His assist rate is awfully low for a player that uses up so many possessions. Until he proves he can get the ball to open teammates on a consistent basis and that he knows how to make good decisions on the floor, teams are going to run extra defenders at English to force him into tough shots and to give the ball up.

Finally, for all of the shooting Mizzou's renowned gym rat supposedly practices, English’s three-point percentage isn't all that great. His 37.5 percent success rate behind the arc is almost exactly the same as that in his freshman year. The figure isn't terrible, especially for a volume shooter, but it's also not standout. English needs to get that figure over 40 percent.

There are other things that could be done to improve the consistency of the Tiger offense. I'd like to see more possessions tilted away from the defense-first backcourt of J.T. Tiller and Zaire Taylor, for one. But if the Tigers can take these English lessons to heart, they'll have a similar ceiling to last year's squad. Eventually, the pollsters will take notice.