Practice. Yes, practice.

That’s what senior cornerback Kip Edwards talked about Saturday night after Missouri’s devastating 19-15 loss to Vanderbilt when asked about the team’s recent shortcomings that have led to its 0-3 Southeastern Conference start.

“We need to practice better,” Edwards said. “That’s really all it boils down to. Games are won in practice — they’re not won on Saturday. Really, they’re won Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. In practice. We need to practice better.”

A lack of enthusiasm throughout the day-to-day grind of the season is hampering the team, Edwards said. At Monday’s press conference, coach Gary Pinkel said he thought the team practiced “pretty good” last week and that his staff is very consistent in how it does things – something that won’t be changed.

“We rarely have bad practices,” Pinkel said.

However, some of Edwards’ teammates echoed his sentiments about an urge to be more spirited on a day-to-day basis.

One was redshirt senior Jared McGriff-Culver, one of the more animated Tigers between the white lines of the gridiron.

“Enthusiasm drives everything,” McGriff-Culver said. “Without enthusiasm you can’t really get where you want to go.”

An increase in ardor has to start with the team captains and fellow seniors to begin a trickle-down effect, McGriff-Culver said.

It’s up to the team’s elder statesmen to lighten the mood in the locker room and on the field to show the younger teammates playing football’s “not a job,” McGriff-Culver said.

“It’s a game — we need to have fun out there,” McGriff-Culver said.

McGriff-Culver has noticed improvement in practice during the past couple of weeks, but the team’s struggles through the first half of its inaugural campaign in the SEC have dampened spirits around the athletic training complex.

“We came out with high hopes for ourselves, so it’s kind of a downer to have a record like this when we know we could have beaten the teams we’ve played thus far,” redshirt senior Gahn McGaffie said.

McGaffie said he feels a sense of urgency to buck the team’s recent downward trend this week.

“This week we have to overdo it almost to get our point across and get everybody going again,” McGaffie said.

Senior left tackle Elvis Fisher, in his sixth year as a Tiger, said this isn’t unfamiliar territory for the team, comparing the feeling to last season’s 2-3 start and noting the current squad’s struggles have just been more publicized.

“This year, there’s so much hype being in the SEC, and then you’ve got all the outside voices telling you that you suck or you’re not worthy enough, but we know what we do here,” Fisher said. “You can’t let one loss turn into two and then another. Enough’s enough.”

Reversing the team’s fortunes this week will be no easy task considering the nation’s No. 1 team, Alabama, visits Faurot Field this Saturday afternoon.

But as the old adage goes, which Pinkel reiterated, if you want to play better, you have to practice better.

During game weeks, the Tigers hold three practices on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Players watch film of the previous game on Sundays. On Mondays, the team conducts meetings and begins to look ahead at the opponent for the coming weekend.

Practices during the season consist of more position-by-position drills, whereas in fall camp the offense and defense finish each practice going head-to-head and playing under a scoring system devised by the coaches to see who gets to don the coveted black jerseys the next day.

As Edwards said, during the season the opposite sides of the ball are competing for each other, not against each other, which dates back to the team’s days as a member of the Big 12 Conference.

But those days are gone. So too, according to Edwards, is an acceptable level of focus.

“It’s not where it needs to be for us to be winners in the SEC,” Edwards said.

The team’s insufficient amount of focus has clouded its postseason picture.

Edwards repeated his remarks about enthusiasm when discussing how the team can get a 13th game back into focus.

“We need (enthusiasm) to happen more often,” Edwards said. “We need guys excited to be out there. That’s really what it all boils down to.”

As he puts it, enthusiasm is contagious, and now’s the time for it to contaminate the locker room, he said.

“I know what it looks like, and I know what time it is for us right now at this moment in the season,” Edwards said. “It’s up to us to answer the bell.”