Coffman's performance shines in Tiger's loss

The senior tight end was one of few to step up.

By Nick Forrester

Published Oct. 13, 2008

Although the Missouri offense lacked its usual swagger on Saturday against the Oklahoma State Cowboys, senior tight end Chase Coffman came up big.

Coffman had 11 receptions, a career-high, for 104 yards. It was, of course, overshadowed by a 28-23 loss.

"A loss is a loss," Coffman said. "It's just a terrible thing. I wish I could've done more, and I know that I could've done more. There are a lot of playmakers on our team, and tonight just happened to be my night. We just weren't as focused as we usually are."

The 23 points scored by Missouri is the team's lowest total since a 21-16 loss at Iowa State in 2006.

"We just hurt ourselves with turnovers and penalties," Coffman said. "This is a game that we probably should've won, but Oklahoma State's a great team, and they came out and made all the plays that they needed to."

Throughout the game, Coffman continued to wow the home crowd with his high hurdles over defenders trying to tackle him.

Even though the Oklahoma State defense was unable to stop Coffman, it repeatedly rattled senior quarterback Chase Daniel and the rest of the Missouri offense.

"When your quarterback's not making as many plays as he usually does, the rest of the team needs to step up, and we didn't do that very well," Coffman said.

Oklahoma State was able to keep sophomore tailback Derrick Washington to a season-low eight rushes for 11 yards. The game also marked the first of the season in which Washington was unable to score two touchdowns.

"They did a good job in stepping up and stopping our running game," Coffman said.

The troubles worked themselves through the entire team.

"We were just out of sync," junior wide receiver Danario Alexander said. "We're going to take every practice seriously and over-prepare for the next game."

Missouri won't have much time to think about the loss, though. The team heads to Austin, Texas, to play the No. 1 Longhorns squad on Saturday, and the Tigers will have more than 90,000 fans cheering against them.

With one conference loss, Missouri is still within reach of accomplishing its goal of winning the Big 12, but another conference loss would be detrimental to that.

"It hurts," sophomore wide receiver Jeremy Maclin said. "Nobody likes to lose. But you have to get ready for another tough opponent."