Missouri coach Gary Pinkel was singing the praises of running back Derrick Washington on Monday and how Washington had raised his game against Colorado last Saturday. He finished with a note of regret. "I wish I'd got him that extra yard," he said.

Individual stats don't matter in sports, coaches will tell you, and players will echo that, especially in a sport like football, where it's team first, second and third. But, it turns out, there are times when individual numbers do matter, and Saturday was one of them. Washington finished the Colorado game with 99 yards, one yard shy of the running back's Valhalla, 100 yards. Did coming that close bother him? You better believe it.

"It's having a three-digit day or a two-digit day," Washington said. "It's big to go over 100 yards. Running backs want to rush for over 100 yards. I know I do. To be stuck at 99, one yard away, it's frustrating."

The magic of 100, of course, is psychological, and the struggling Mizzou running game can use all the good vibrations it can find. Even in these inflated statistical times, watching the yardage odometer click over to 100 has not lost its allure, and coaches know it.

"You remember those games a lot," Washington said. He has had one 100-yard game this year — he ran for 120 against Bowling Green — and had three last season, against Nebraska (139), Illinois (130) and Iowa State (128) and barely missed once, rushing for 97 yards against Baylor. In the entire Big 12, there have been 29 100-yard games this season, though only nine in games between Big 12 teams.

"It means a lot," said Washington's backup, De'Vion Moore, who is still awaiting his first 100-yard college game. "It means that work paid off. At the Division I level, to have a 100-yard game is extremely difficult. For all of us, coming out of high school, 100 yards was simple. In college, it gets a little frustrating, not being able to have a 100-yard game every time you get the ball.

"You don't want to say you've proven yourself, but you're reassuring yourself that you put in the work, put in the effort, and it's paying off."

And if you just miss?

"You sit back and think about it and you think about all the things you could have done differently to get that one yard. To have a 99-yard game is extremely good, but it's extremely disappointing."

Washington said his offensive linemen were giving him grief about finishing at 99 — "You couldn't get one more yard?" they asked — but 100 is not just a big number for backs. It's big for the linemen, too, who have fewer ways to outwardly quantify a good game.

"Just like a 20-yard game would look bad for the line, a 100-yard game would look good for the line," center Tim Barnes said. "It's something we always want to try to get done. It's a milestone, triple digits. Ninety-nine yards is still a yard away, but it's 99. It's not 100."

Now, it may be getting a little harder for a Mizzou back to get to 100. In an effort to provide more protection for quarterback Blaine Gabbert, the Tigers are increasingly using a two-man backfield, which means that while Washington remains the top back, Moore and Kendial Lawrence will get more carries. But it might also help. Rotating three backs will keep everyone fresher, and keeping Gabbert intact will help the passing game, which ultimately will help the running game.

There's another reason coaches love games when someone rushes for 100 yards: It usually means a win. In the Big 12 this season, teams with 100-yard rushers are 23-6, though it can be a chicken-and-egg thing: Did the team win because it had an effective ground game, or did the guy get 100 yards because the team was ahead late in the game and kept the ball on the ground to run out the clock?

In many situations, Pinkel would have left Washington in against Colorado to get that yard, but a sideline mixup kept the coach in the dark about how close he was. Washington actually was over 100 yards for several minutes against Colorado. But on what turned out to be his last carry of the game, Washington was tackled for a 4-yard loss and slipped back to 99. On Mizzou's last series, Washington was on the sideline as Moore and Lawrence carried the ball to run out the clock. Of course, getting the win and snapping Mizzou's confidence-sapping three-game losing streak was a big enough tradeoff to keep Pinkel from feeling too down.

"No question (it's meaningful to get 100)," Pinkel said. "If it's not a real tight game, if you're winning significantly with five, eight, nine minutes left, and you find the quarterback has 296 yards passing, a running back has 97 yards, a receiver has 98, you help them out if you can. Some years you can do that, some years you can't. I just wanted the game to get over. I wanted to win that game."