COLUMBIA, Mo. – Oh, the Auburn memories.

Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz has had enough. Some are bitter, like the taste of the few blades of grass that stood between his team and a victory the last time he coached against Auburn. Some are sweet, such as the national title that he won early in his coaching career with the blue-orange Tigers.

Saturday’s game between No. 19 Mizzou (5-1, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) and Auburn (2-4, 0-3 SEC) will be an odd mix of those memories and something else entirely.

Let’s get the vegetables out of the way first: MU’s last clash with Auburn was up there with the most baffling, frustrating finishes in program history — not a fifth less, to be clear, but still etched in Missouri’s misery.

Two plays stood out during Mizzou’s 17-14 road loss to Auburn in 2022. First, then-kicker Harrison Mevis missed a chip shot field from 26 yards after previously being flawless from that range. That was the final play in regulation, with both sets of Tigers going into overtime.

At that moment, running back Nathaniel Peat charged toward the goal line with a game-winning touchdown just inches away. But the ball slipped out of his hand, where an Auburn defender pounced on it — a fumble, touchback and loss in one sequence.

“There is so much energy, time and passion put into these games,” Drinkwitz said at the time. “To come so close and lose… it’s heartbreaking.”

That game wasn’t that long ago. If you’re a Missouri fan and you read that section quickly to get past the edge, it’s probably still pretty vivid to you.

But MU has changed quite a bit since then. First, the Black and Gold Tigers have exorcised the close-game demons of the 2022 season, going from 2-4 in one-score games that season to 4-0 last year and 2-0 already this season.

Their roster turnover was also significant. Despite being only two years away, only six starters from Auburn’s 2022 game are likely to see the field on Saturday: quarterback Brady Cook, wide receiver Luther Burden III, center Connor Tollison, offensive lineman Mitchell Walters, defensive tackle Kristian Williams and safety Joseph Charleston.

While Missouri players may not have a collective memory of what happened on the Plains in the not-too-distant past, their coaches do. Keeping the ball safe around the end zone – meaning not stretching it out to try to get it over the pylon or goal line – is a concern. One such coachable moment occurred in 2023 preseason camp, when Burden stuck the ball out during a drill that didn’t have much to do with ball security.

Nevertheless, wide receivers coach Jacob Peeler loudly reminded Burden never to do that — albeit with a few unprintable words thrown in to underscore his point.

Drinkwitz’s warmer and fuzzier Auburn memories, however, seem to be the ones that especially shaped his program-building at Missouri.

His first college coaching position was at Auburn under then-coach Gene Chizik. Drinkwitz had worked at the high school level in his home state of Arkansas, but accepted an offer to become a quality control assistant on the Plains.

His first season was Auburn’s title run in 2010, when the Tigers went all the way to defeat No. 2 Oregon in the national championship, securing a 14-0 season.

“When I got there, I thought coaching college football was easy,” Drinkwitz recalled this week. “I mean, we went 12-0 (in the regular season). You just get the two best players in college football and you win – that’s what Cam Newton and Nick Fairley did for us.

Having a Heisman-winning quarterback and All-American defensive tackle in Newton and Fairley certainly made things easier. But listening to Drinkwitz’s brief recollection of one of his most fundamental formative coaching experiences brings up shades of the way he leads the Mizzou program.

As Drinkwitz speaks of Newton:

“Cam Newton was one of the best – and is one of the best – leaders I have ever seen in the locker room: he brought the team together and faced a lot of adversity. He faced a lot of personal adversity, whether it was criticism of the play in his first few games, or even the other things that happened throughout the year. But he remained stable.”

Sounds a bit like Drinkwitz talking about Missouri quarterback Brady Cook, doesn’t it?

It wouldn’t be surprising if Drinkwitz, unconsciously or intentionally, has tried to accentuate the aspects of the locker room culture that stood out so vividly to him during his time at Auburn.

Perhaps that will be evident in a way during Saturday’s match. There are details on the field that will draw more attention than the influences of a head coach’s philosophy, and rightly so.

But there is an opportunity for Missouri, even in a relatively mundane SEC game, to improve the nature of its memories of a foe like Auburn.