To be honest, the Chamber is far more interested in finding Fluff Cowan (former Tiger Woods caddy, current caddy for Jim Furyk) who is staying in the same hotel and lining up post-round drinks than it is in feeding your Mizzou athletics addiction. But there is work to be done, so the Chamber turned down free tickets to round two of the PGA today because it knew that if it didn't make an appearance, there would be a multi-page thread about whether J'Mon Moore is to blame for all of society's ills. Wait, that's already happening. Ah, hell, we've already started, so we might as well continue.
BASKETBALL RECRUITING
Starting to see a little bit of movement here. Mario McKinney cut down his list to seven schools and Missouri made the cut (it would have been a complete shock if it hadn't). You can see the rest of the list, along with the latest on other 2019 targets, in Keegan's story from this week.
McKinney still seems the most likely guy to be Mizzou's first commitment. There seems to be quite a bit of momentum from national folks for the Tigers on Rocket Watts as well. That would be a hell of a pull for Cornell Mann out of Michigan. At this point, we can't predict a commitment, but we'd expect Mizzou to at least get an official visit.
The Tigers hosted Las Vegas small forward Jalen Hill on an unofficial visit Thursday. Our attempts to reach Hill have been unsuccessful so it's impossible to say where things stand. Some will take this as scary news because he plays the same position as E.J. Liddell, but it's way too soon to say if this is in any way related to how Mizzou feels about its chances with Liddell. The Belleville star has a visit to Ohio State on September 1st and the Buckeyes are most definitely a major threat to land him. But we would expect Liddell will take more visits and Missouri will almost certainly be one of them so Cuonzo Martin and staff should have their chance to impress him before the November signing period.
There ought to be some movement on the hoops recruiting front in the next month or so. Official visits can happen in September and when kids start scheduling those we'll get a much better idea of where Missouri stands and be able to narrow things down from the long list of players Missouri has been interested in.
Until then, we'll keep trying to reach guys.
FOOTBALL RECRUITING
On the football side, August is generally the slowest month of the year. Coaches are focused on fall camp and preparing for the season. Prospects are going through practices with their high school teams and getting ready for their senior years. August generally doesn't bring many commitments. Over the last five years, Missouri has gotten a total of six August commitments and hasn't had one in either of the last two years. So if there is news this month in terms of commitments, it probably won't be more than one or two. And don't be surprised if there aren't even that many.
We should start to get some official visit dates in the coming weeks though. The Georgia game will be the biggest one in the season. Memphis, Kentucky and Vandy might have a few, but probably won't be major targeted weekends. They'll use those weekends for kids who just can't work out other dates and need to come then. The bulk of the visits we would expect will be scheduled in December. There are two visit weekends before the early signing period for everyone...three for anyone not playing in the SEC Championship game.
So the truth is, on this front right now, there's just not much news.
FOOTBALL TEAM NEWS
As we posted this morning and Mitchell Forde confirmed with a team spokesman, Messiah Swinson tore his ACL in practice yesterday. The team isn't saying it, but that obviously means he's done for the year. He'll take the redshirt season and we would assume will be back for spring football. It's not catastrophic because he wasn't going to be higher than the third tight end, but we do think Swinson would have played. This puts more importance on Logan Christopherson and/or Brendan Scales being ready to contribute. We've heard some good things in particular about Scales in camp, but we'll wait and see. Albert Okwuegbunam and Kendall Blanton were already going to get the vast majority of snaps and that percentage may have just gone up a little bit.
We had a Q&A with running back Tyler Badie this morning. We've heard his name a lot this week and there's a good chance he's the third back behind Damarea Crockett and Larry Rountree III this season. From what we hear, Badie has a gear that Mizzou probably hasn't had since Henry Josey. We haven't seen a lot of him in practice, but everyone says he has speed to burn. Definite guy to watch.
Other freshmen we're confident will play (although obviously nothing has been decided and things can change): Dominic Gicinto, Jalen Knox, Jatorian Hansford. Those are the only four we're comfortable at this point saying we're pretty sure will see the field (and we're more confident in the receivers than Hansford at this point...that one's a little more of a gut feeling). There will be others. Candidates include Kam Scott, Khmari Thompson, Tyrone Collins, Jarvis Ware, Trajan Jeffcoat, Daniel Parker Jr., Cameron Wilkins, Chad Bailey (if he's healthy, Forde mentioned he's got his arm in a sling at practice this morning). It will probably be another week before we can start really zeroing in on freshmen who are going to see the field and the staff might start confirming some guys will get a shot early on.
Mitchell is at practice this morning and will have complete coverage. We've got stories throughout the weekend. It's time to watch some guys chase a little white ball for a couple days.
BASKETBALL RECRUITING
Starting to see a little bit of movement here. Mario McKinney cut down his list to seven schools and Missouri made the cut (it would have been a complete shock if it hadn't). You can see the rest of the list, along with the latest on other 2019 targets, in Keegan's story from this week.
McKinney still seems the most likely guy to be Mizzou's first commitment. There seems to be quite a bit of momentum from national folks for the Tigers on Rocket Watts as well. That would be a hell of a pull for Cornell Mann out of Michigan. At this point, we can't predict a commitment, but we'd expect Mizzou to at least get an official visit.
The Tigers hosted Las Vegas small forward Jalen Hill on an unofficial visit Thursday. Our attempts to reach Hill have been unsuccessful so it's impossible to say where things stand. Some will take this as scary news because he plays the same position as E.J. Liddell, but it's way too soon to say if this is in any way related to how Mizzou feels about its chances with Liddell. The Belleville star has a visit to Ohio State on September 1st and the Buckeyes are most definitely a major threat to land him. But we would expect Liddell will take more visits and Missouri will almost certainly be one of them so Cuonzo Martin and staff should have their chance to impress him before the November signing period.
There ought to be some movement on the hoops recruiting front in the next month or so. Official visits can happen in September and when kids start scheduling those we'll get a much better idea of where Missouri stands and be able to narrow things down from the long list of players Missouri has been interested in.
Until then, we'll keep trying to reach guys.
FOOTBALL RECRUITING
On the football side, August is generally the slowest month of the year. Coaches are focused on fall camp and preparing for the season. Prospects are going through practices with their high school teams and getting ready for their senior years. August generally doesn't bring many commitments. Over the last five years, Missouri has gotten a total of six August commitments and hasn't had one in either of the last two years. So if there is news this month in terms of commitments, it probably won't be more than one or two. And don't be surprised if there aren't even that many.
We should start to get some official visit dates in the coming weeks though. The Georgia game will be the biggest one in the season. Memphis, Kentucky and Vandy might have a few, but probably won't be major targeted weekends. They'll use those weekends for kids who just can't work out other dates and need to come then. The bulk of the visits we would expect will be scheduled in December. There are two visit weekends before the early signing period for everyone...three for anyone not playing in the SEC Championship game.
So the truth is, on this front right now, there's just not much news.
FOOTBALL TEAM NEWS
As we posted this morning and Mitchell Forde confirmed with a team spokesman, Messiah Swinson tore his ACL in practice yesterday. The team isn't saying it, but that obviously means he's done for the year. He'll take the redshirt season and we would assume will be back for spring football. It's not catastrophic because he wasn't going to be higher than the third tight end, but we do think Swinson would have played. This puts more importance on Logan Christopherson and/or Brendan Scales being ready to contribute. We've heard some good things in particular about Scales in camp, but we'll wait and see. Albert Okwuegbunam and Kendall Blanton were already going to get the vast majority of snaps and that percentage may have just gone up a little bit.
We had a Q&A with running back Tyler Badie this morning. We've heard his name a lot this week and there's a good chance he's the third back behind Damarea Crockett and Larry Rountree III this season. From what we hear, Badie has a gear that Mizzou probably hasn't had since Henry Josey. We haven't seen a lot of him in practice, but everyone says he has speed to burn. Definite guy to watch.
Other freshmen we're confident will play (although obviously nothing has been decided and things can change): Dominic Gicinto, Jalen Knox, Jatorian Hansford. Those are the only four we're comfortable at this point saying we're pretty sure will see the field (and we're more confident in the receivers than Hansford at this point...that one's a little more of a gut feeling). There will be others. Candidates include Kam Scott, Khmari Thompson, Tyrone Collins, Jarvis Ware, Trajan Jeffcoat, Daniel Parker Jr., Cameron Wilkins, Chad Bailey (if he's healthy, Forde mentioned he's got his arm in a sling at practice this morning). It will probably be another week before we can start really zeroing in on freshmen who are going to see the field and the staff might start confirming some guys will get a shot early on.
Mitchell is at practice this morning and will have complete coverage. We've got stories throughout the weekend. It's time to watch some guys chase a little white ball for a couple days.
