COLUMBIA, MO. — Mizzou receiver Jeremy Maclin feared the worst when he fell to the Edward Jones Dome turf on Saturday night. He thought his ankle was broken.

"I had thoughts going through my head there could be something really wrong with it," Maclin said Monday.

"That's why he was so upset and had the towel over his head,'' quarterback Chase Daniel said. "He had it in his mind it was really broken."

Two plays before, Maclin had heard a noise in his ankle while running a pass route, felt some pain and came out of the game. He sat out a play, then came back onto the field to see how his ankle was. Answer: Not good.

He ran a few steps, tried to cut and fell to the ground. He was helped to the sideline, left the field on a cart, his head hidden by a towel. But X-rays at the Dome gave him good news, and an MRI on Sunday affirmed it: The ankle wasn't broken; he had only a strained tendon in his left ankle.

On Monday, Mizzou coach Gary Pinkel said Maclin was probable for Saturday's game with Southeast Missouri State. Maclin went a step further, saying he would be at 100 percent or close to it by Saturday and would play.

"I want to play,'' he said. "I'm competitive. You want to be out there with your teammates. Nobody wants to sit out. At the rate I'm at right now, I think I'll be ready to play."

Daniel was confident that would happen.

"He's a competitor,'' Daniel said. "I saw him in the training room and he had a smile on his face. I don't think it's hurting him as bad as the other day when he thought it was broken."

The question is whether Mizzou would need him at 100 percent or any fraction thereof against a Football Championship Subdivision school such as SEMO. If things go as anticipated, the starters could by out by halftime.

While Mizzou's offense has many weapons, the loss of Maclin would make those other weapons less potent. The attention Maclin gets creates opportunities for everyone else.

"When you see an impact player like that, and see a friend like that (get hurt)," Daniel said, "to see what he's gone through with his knee, thank God he didn't have to go through that again with his ankle. It hurts the whole team, the community, the fans when an impact player like that goes down."

How did Daniel feel when he heard that Maclin would be OK?

"No doubt about it. You look at it and what he was able to do, an impact player like that, it's a sigh of relief," he said.

Maclin is no stranger to serious injury, sitting out his freshman season in 2006 after reconstructive right-knee surgery. On Monday, he had his ankle wrapped, but that was it, and he said it feels "a lot better."

Before the injury, Maclin was having a typical Jeremy Maclin game in the 52-42 win over Illinois. He had a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown and a 46-yard punt return. After the touchdown return, Illinois started kicking the ball anywhere but to Maclin.

Still, before leaving the game in the fourth quarter with 234 all-purpose yards, he wasn't satisfied with how he was playing.

"I was disappointed in the way I performed on offense,'' he said. "There were tough catches I should make (but didn't). It was a little bit of nerves, a lack of focus. I'm better than that. I know the whole offense is better than what we played. Some people say hard to play better when we put up 52 points, but we are."

As Pinkel mentioned, the offense produced only 38 of those points. The other 14 came on Maclin's kickoff return and Sean Weatherspoon's fourth quarter interception return for a touchdown. (Weatherspoon was honored as the Walter Camp national player of the week for his two-interception, nine-tackle game.)

"We need to become a better football team,'' said Pinkel, whose Tigers probably will remain at No. 6 in the next Associated Press poll. "We need to become a better offensive team. In the fourth quarter, we had the ball four times and punted three times and missed a fourth-and-one. … We did a lot of good things, but to act like everything is fine on offense … it's not. We (also) have a lot of things to do on defense."

Elsewhere on the injury front, safety William Moore has a foot sprain and is expected to play, though he won't practice today. Linebacker Steve Redmond, who has already had one knee operation this year, will have another this afternoon.

"It's unfortunate because he's given so much to this program,'' Pinkel said. "He's a soldier. He asked, 'Can I get back for the bowl game?' This guy always wants to give to the team."

Pinkel said linebacker Van Alexander was released to play but they need to make sure he's at full speed before he takes the field. Wide receiver Danario Alexander is expected to be back next week. Defensive lineman Andy Maples has been released to practice and could be back, Pinkel said, "possibly this week, maybe next week, for sure possibly the next week."

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