Shreveport, La. ? It is a mystery sometimes to watch the way Missouri’s football team manages to make life so hard for itself.

As good as Mizzou’s football revival has been, the season-ending, 27-14 Independence Bowl loss to Arkansas was just one more haunting reminder of how much better it all could have been.

All night long, Tigers coach Gary Pinkel seemed to have a tortured expression permanently planted on his face. All night long, Pinkel kept rubbing his hand across his chiseled jaw. All night long, he kept squeezing all the life out of his face, exasperated by the constant mistakes that turned what should have been a skin-tight contest into an endless uphill fight.

And now, there he was in the bowels of this old stadium, and the frustration was even more evident. Mizzou had made mistakes in the kicking game. Mizzou made mistakes in the passing game. But mostly, Pinkel made so many hand-wringing, frustrating play calls that could have kept this game within reach, but ultimately gave the victory away.

“I’m very disappointed in the amount of mistakes we made,” Pinkel said. “If you’re good enough, poised enough, disciplined enough, you don’t do those things.”

There’s absolutely no reason after a timeout that the wrong personnel should ever be on the field. You want to know why he kept on pulling on his face until it looked like Turkish taffy? These are the kinds of mental mistakes that had to drive Pinkel nuts: There was a blocked punt, a botched fake field goal and a deep snap on a punt that went really, really, really deep.

There was the illegal substitution penalty against Mizzou after a timeout late in the third quarter that turned a third and 1 into a third and 6. Even though Missouri ended up scoring on that drive to cut the Arkansas lead to 27-14 and turn a near-rout back into a ballgame at the end of the third quarter, this penalty had to be the one that sent Pinkel’s blood pressure spiking.

The Tigers had just spent the entire timeout drawing up the perfect play on this important third and 1. Everyone huddled around Pinkel, and then they all went back out onto the field. As they lined up to run the play, reserve Damien Nash was in at tailback, but apparently Pinkel wanted starter Zack Abron in the game.

Now Abron rushed onto the field and Nash dashed off at the last second.

That was simply the most inexcusable mental error of the night, even if it wasn’t the most costly.

But ultimately, as the Tigers finished one of their best seasons in ages, there was still the feeling that it could have been better. You had to wonder what would have happened if Pinkel had gone for two chip-shot field goals instead of going for — and failing to get — first downs on fourth-and-1 situations late in the first half and early in the third quarter.

If Pinkel played the percentages and kicked the field goals, it would have put six extra points on the board and as the Tigers were moving the ball late in the fourth quarter, they would have been going for the tie and a possible overtime, rather than trying to make it a one-touchdown game.

You also had to wonder what would have happened if Pinkel had not forgotten about the running game at all the wrong times so early in the contest. Missouri compiled a staggering 407 yards of total offense, including 252 yards on the ground, but along the way, when the Razorbacks were building up a 24-7 lead, it seemed like MU forgot about pounding the ball inside to Abron (137 yards and a 7.2-yard-per-carry average).

But even as the final results of the Independence Bowl left Pinkel and everyone else more than a little frustrated, it still was something to look down there on that field and see that Missouri was in the postseason and looked like it belonged. The Tigers are still very much a work in progress, but isn’t it nice to put progress and Missouri football in the same sentence?