Year 2 under Barry Odom was a tale of two seasons for Missouri. The Tigers started the year a dreadful 1-5 before winning six in a row to end the season 7-5 and earn an invite to the Texas Bowl. To the casual observer, the turning point of the season may look like an Oct. 21 win over Idaho. That victory ended a five-game losing skid and reminded Odom’s squad what winning felt like. But at Wednesday’s SEC Media Days, Mizzou players had a different answer, identifying a turning point that might not seem obvious.

On Sept. 23, Missouri lost to Auburn 14-51. It dropped MU to 1-3 on the season and though the losing streak wasn’t over, Odom’s reaction on the sidelines and in the locker room resonated with his team.

“I knew after that Auburn game that — even though we lost the Auburn game, you could see him on the sideline, like how he felt, he’s screaming about it and everything,” Terez Hall told AL.com’s Tom Green. “You could see how passionate he is about it. That’s a person you want to play for, regardless of the situation. We were 1-5 or something like that [note: Missouri was 1-3], we lost the next two games, but just seeing that moment and that he actually cared for us and not just — he cared for us to play hard, and we wasn’t playing hard.”

Odom said it was about sending a message to his team at the right time.

“The emotional side of that evening after that game, our players see that side of me often, and I’ve — I’m usually fairly reserved in a setting with media and don’t show that side of me, but that’s more of my personality,” Odom said. “I thought at that point in the season, at the time that they needed — they needed to see that. I needed to stand up for them a little bit publicly, because I knew we were getting close.”

More from Hall and Terry Beckner Jr. on the impact of the Auburn game can be found in Green’s article.

Correction: Terez Hall was mistakenly referred to as Emanuel Hall in the original posting of this article.