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WAVES IN NEBRASKA
- The four-star offensive lineman is expected to announce his Top 5 schools on Saturday and we're hearing that Missouri will make the cut. To jog everyone's memory, Missouri has been making a strong push for Woods for quite a while now. We profiled that interest back in August of last year.
- Riley-Ducker made a few trips this past week to check out schools of interest in his recruiting process, one of those stops included Missouri. He talked about that and his overall recruiting process in a story we posted on Thursday. It looks like the four-star prospect may narrow things down further after these sets of visits and then take another set of visits (if the dead period ever gets lifted) before he ultimately makes his college decision.
DAVID GIBBS LEAVING FOR UCF
- This is an impactful move for 2022 DB commit Isaac Thompson as Gibbs played a critical role throughout his recruiting process. The family was hoping that Gibbs would become the new defensive coordinator at Missouri, however, that didn't happen and now he's heading to UCF to join Gus Malzahn's staff as co-DC. We still think it will take a lot to flip the four-star prospect from Mizzou, but Thompson is at least staying in contact with familiar faces as he recently had a virtual visit with Arkansas and is talking with Illinois as well.
As far as Gibbs' replacement, it's far too early to tell. Eli Drinkwitz likely has a list. He has not shared it with us.
NEW OFFERS
- Stokes is Missouri's latest running back target. We touched base with the three-star prospect last week and he told us that running backs coach Curtis Luper had just reached out to him. The three-star prospect already holds notable offers from South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Duke, Louisville, Minnesota, Wake Forest, and others.
- Epps became the newest in-state offer for Missouri this past week. The three-star prospect just committed to Oklahoma State back on February 10th. So, will an offer from the Tigers have an impact on his status with the Cowboys? Right now, the answer is no. There hasn't been a lot of communication between Epps and the staff throughout his recruiting process, so the offer kind of came out of nowhere. If Missouri really wants Epps to join the class, they'll need to really ramp up the communication on their end.
ICYMI
Some follow-up/recap from last weekend's Best of the Midwest Combine:
- We caught up with one of Missouri's top targets out of the Hoosier state last weekend in four-star offensive lineman DJ Moore. The Ft. Wayne native detailed his relationship with assistant coach D.J. Smith and talked about watching a couple of Missouri games on TV last season. Moore is hoping to take visits to all of his top suitors before making a decision.
- On Wednesday, we posted a story on 4-star defensive tackle and current Cincinnati commit Derrick Shepard. Missouri has been showing interest for quite a while with the connection being Connor Bazelak, a former high school teammate of Shepard's. Ohio State, Alabama, and Auburn are other schools that are expressing interest as well.
- Goodwin was another Missouri target that lived up to his billing during the 1-on-1 portion of the combine, using his frame, length, and strength to win every rep. The big boys are after Goodwin, so the odds of Missouri making a dent here seem low. He named Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Georgia, LSU, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Oregon, USC, Kentucky, and Louisville as places he would like to visit.
- Williams is a prospect that I liked from a physical standpoint and he really showed grit during 1-on-1's, matching up against Kiyaunta Goodwin on nearly every rep he took. While Goodwin bested Williams on almost every rep, he definitely made the offensive line prospect earn his wins during the competition. The Westfield native already has notable offers from Alabama, Arkansas, Michigan State, Michigan State, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and others.
- We'll have more on Johnson over the weekend, but he's another prospect to keep an eye on as Missouri started talking to him a couple of weeks ago. The three-star said he has chatted with both Curtis Luper and Eli Drinkwitz recently. Sounds like he could be a guy that the Tigers could extend an offer to at any time. He also referenced Eric Dickerson when asked him about guys he liked to watch, always refreshing when the kids reference the old school players.
- We'll also have more Carroll next week. He is another prospect from the Hoosier state that Missouri is expressing interest in. The three-star prospect is communicating with assistant D.J. Smith and is someone they will continue to monitor and evaluate. He took home defensive back MVP honors at the Combine.
GENERAL NUMBERS AND INFO ON THE 2021/2022 CLASSES
Everybody is in a bit of limbo right now waiting to see what will happen with the NCAA rulings on eligibility and scholarship restrictions. Teams currently have to operate as if they will be restricted to 85 scholarships every year. Returning seniors do not count toward that limit for the 2021 season, but with everyone else not using a year of eligibility, it means the 2022 class could be very light in numbers across the country.
For 2021, Missouri has approximately three spots remaining it could use on transfers. That number is always a little bit flexible--we have Missouri at 79 scholarships as of today and believe the number could go as high as six if need be, but we don't expect it to be that high-- so we are operating on the idea of three spots left to be used at some point between now and August.
That's when it gets tricky. Missouri already has four commitments in 2022. That leaves, as of this moment, only about four guaranteed spots for the 2022 class between now and next February. Will it rise? Of course. There's always attrition and there almost has to be some sort of allowance from the NCAA for additional scholarships. We expect this class to end up being 20-22 players, but as of right now, it's tough to project that exactly with all of the unknowns.
Also figuring into this is the extension of the dead period through May 31. That means no in person visits for prospects during spring football. It doesn't mean kids can't come to campus and walk around and check things out on their own. There are definitely players doing that across the country. But the coaches can't have contact with them, they can't set up an itinerary for the day, nothing like that. Prospects can contact coaches and coaches can give them an idea of things they should see around campus, but they can't be taken around by the team or have a pre-set itinerary for the day as they normally would for an unofficial visit.
So this could go one of two ways. First, players could choose to wait things out a little bit longer until visits are allowed. Or, coaches could be telling kids, "Nobody knows how many spots we're going to have this year, if you want to know you have one, you better jump in." So kids commit early again like they did last year and if visits are eventually allowed you've got a whole bunch of committed kids taking official visits to other places.
In other words, it's all up in the air right now and we'll have to wait to see what happens.
