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COLUMBIA, Mo. — Oh, the Auburn memories.

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

Saturday’s matchup between No. 19 Mizzou (5-1, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) and Auburn (2-4, 0-3 SEC) will be a strange blend of those memories and something entirely different.

Let’s get eating the veggies out of the way first: MU’s last tangle with Auburn was up there with the most mind-boggling, frustrating finishes in program history — no fifth down, to be clear, but etched in Missourian woes nonetheless.

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

It was then that running back Nathaniel Peat was powering toward the goal line with a game-winning touchdown just inches away. But the ball slipped out of his hand, where an Auburn defender jumped on it — a fumble, touchback and defeat packaged into one sequence.

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

That game was not all that long ago — if you’re a Missouri fan who speed-read that section to get past the pungency, it’s probably still quite vivid for you.

But MU has changed quite a bit since then. For one, the black-and-gold Tigers exorcised the 2022 season’s close-game demons, going from 2-4 in one-score contests in that season to 4-0 last year and 2-0 already this season.

Their roster turnover has been considerable, too. Despite it being just two years ago, only six starters from the 2022 Auburn game will likely 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.

Though 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 secure around the end zone — which means not extending it to try to get it over the pylon or goal line — is a point of emphasis. One such coachable moment came in 2023 preseason camp, when Burden stuck the ball out during a drill that didn’t have much to do with ball security.

Nonetheless, wide receivers coach Jacob Peeler loudly reminded Burden to never do that — albeit with an unprintable word or two thrown in to punctuate his point.

Drinkwitz’s warmer and fuzzier Auburn memories seem like the ones that have especially shaped his program-building at Missouri, though.

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

His first season was Auburn’s 2010 title run, when the Tigers marched all the way to beat No. 2 Oregon in the national championship, cementing 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 reminiscence on one of his most foundational formative coaching experiences brings up shades of how he runs the Mizzou program.

Like with how Drinkwitz speaks of Newton:

“Cam Newton was one of the best — is one of the best — leaders that I’ve ever seen in the locker room: pulled the team together, faced a lot of adversity. He faced a lot of personal adversity, whether it was criticism of play in his first couple of games, or even with the other stuff that occurred throughout the year. But he stayed steady.”

Sounds a bit like how Drinkwitz talks about Missouri quarterback Brady Cook, does it not?

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

Maybe that will show in some capacity during Saturday’s game. There are on-field details that will command more attention that the influences of a head coach’s philosophy, and rightly so.

But there’s a chance for Missouri, even in a relatively mundane SEC game, to improve the nature of its memories of a foe like Auburn.