FOOTBALL RECRUITING
- Last week, we mentioned South Carolina being a team to watch in the recruitment of Evans. It appears Oklahoma State is a contender to keep an eye on as well. The JUCO running back completed a virtual visit with the Cowboys' staff on Monday. Missouri is still pressing hard here as Evans is a guy they really want to add to their 2021 class that will give them solid depth and college experience.
- George is fresh off a Zoom call and virtual visit with Missouri's staff last week. We followed up with him over the weekend and asked what he likes about the program post virtual visit, he replied, "they probably have the best facilities I have ever seen, I love it, it's a really good fit for me." The JUCO defensive tackle also moved up his decision date to Thanksgiving day, November 26th. All signs are pointing to Missouri here.
- After delaying his October 8th commitment, Walker could be close to choosing a college towards the end of this month. Nothing has really changed when it comes to his top schools it appears - UCLA, Texas, Missouri, and Colorado are still in the mix. We don't get the impression that he's a take for Texas right now, so it's looking more like a three-team race. We're still pretty sure Missouri would take him, he's got an extensive history with Brick Haley and camped at Mizzou last summer. He has family in Los Angeles, so there is familiarity with the area there and of course, Colorado is the home state school. Hard to get a gauge on where he stands at this point, but it's something that could become a little clearer in the next few days.
- In case you missed our story on Missouri's latest addition, here is a rundown of why Ndoma-Ogar picked the Tigers as his new home. First, his grandparents live in Florissant so he's familiar with the Show Me State from that aspect. He also visited Missouri the spring before his senior season of high school and had a positive experience from that trip. He also is familiar with offensive line coach Marcus Johnson from his time at Duke when he visited there as a sophomore. He mentioned his conversations with Johnson and Eli Drinkwitz didn't feel scripted and he wants to be a part of what they are building in Columbia.
- Barber backed off his commitment from Minnesota on Monday night and with that comes new interest from other programs. Missouri is one of those programs that are showing interest in the three-star prospect out of Jacksonville. Purdue, West Virginia, Rutgers, Virginia Tech, Miami, and others have also reached out. Barber had his fair share of power five offers when he committed to the Gophers back in May that included Georgia Tech, Louisville, Duke, Ole Miss, and others.
BASKETBALL RECRUITING
Mizzou signed all five of its commitments in the 2021 class on Wednesday. You can get comments from the players and also from Cuonzo Martin in our story here.
We have long said that we didn't expect anything else to happen in the early signing period. There is currently one spot left if the seniors leave and everyone else returns. Martin said this week that he expects most seniors to move on. We are also anticipating this is the last year in CoMo for Xavier Pinson, which would give Missouri two spots left in this class (plus potentially any other offseason attrition). We would think the two spots will be used on transfers, but don't rule out a juco player if someone emerges in the spring.
SCHEDULING NOTES
Want to be clear the section is Gabe in case anyone gets mad at what could be a little pesssimistic, a little ranting and some things people here might not want to read. So if it makes you angry, direct the anger at me.
Let's start with football. The SEC is at the point of no return. I believe every team has been impacted somehow by COVID, either by having to skip or move a game because of issues in their own program or in their opponents. There's no more wiggle room (or at least it is EXTREMELY limited). There are already four games scheduled for December 12th. That's without a reschedule date for LSU/Alabama or Mizzou/Georgia. It's not too hard to put MU/UGA on December 19th because there's little to no chance either of those teams is in the SEC title game.
But Alabama almost certainly will be. Let's get one thing clear: The TV people (and they're the reason a season is happening--hopefully by now everyone is willing to admit that) want LSU/Bama to happen. Even if LSU isn't very good this year, that's still a ratings powerhouse. LSU has Arkansas, A&M, Ole Miss and Florida left. Bama has Kentucky, Auburn and Arkansas. You're not canceling the Iron Bowl. I could see a situation where LSU/Ole Miss and Bama/Kentucky are the games that end up getting axed to allow LSU and Bama to play (then could you have Ole Miss play Kentucky at some point?) Maybe LSU/Bama doesn't happen, but I bet they'll try to make it happen.
If no more games get postponed, you can probably make that work somehow. I'd categorize it as extremely optimistic that no more games get canceled. At this point, Mizzou and Auburn have issues that put next week in question as does LSU and Vandy has been flirting with the threshold all season. Any games that get pushed now simply have nowhere to go.
There is a solution: Just push the end of the season back. No one expects that to happen. There are a few reasons:
1) Nobody is in charge of college football. There's no commissioner to say "This is what we're doing." Every league makes its own rules. They've hardly worked together so far
2) The Rose Bowl has always been crazy stubborn about playing on Jan 1 at the same time and nobody thinks that will change. The Rose and the Sugar are this year's semifinal games and are scheduled for New Year's Day. They'll get much better ratings there than they would on January 16th. Even if it would make more sense to push thing back a couple weeks.
3) TV people (especially ESPN) want the other bowl games. The 12 days between league title games and the CFP playoffs are bowl time. A lot of people watch a lot of games they wouldn't otherwise watch because they're off work, the games are on and there aren't a lot of other options. Putting those games in the first two weeks in January likely kills ratings for all them.
TL;DNR version: It's a business. TV matters more than everything else. Also, nobody has ever shown much interest in cooperating to do things that make sense for everyone.
In an ideal world Mizzou has five games left and a bowl game. We'll see.
Now, let's talk basketball. Missouri's schedule is set. The Braggin' Rights game is in Columbia. The multi-team event will feature games against Oregon and Boston College, we believe, on Dec 2/3. It's possible there is one more game there, bringing the total to 26.
This is the part that probably won't make some happy because we said similar things this summer and it made people mad. We're not arguing whether the rules are right, wrong, fair, unfair or anything else. But they're the rules and the way we look at things is framed by then.
The simple truth is this: Hoops is much tougher to pull off than football. Social distancing at a football practice is doable. I'm not sure it is in basketball. If Xavier Pinson is guarding Dru Smith while you scrimmage, they're within six feet of each other the entire time pretty much. In addition, you've got 85 players in football. You can be down six linemen or two quarterbacks or 25 players total and have enough. In hoops, if one guy tests positive, your whole team is more or less done for two weeks. In other words, any team that has a positive test pretty much isn't playing for 14 days. There's no way around that.
And it's already happening
Now, hoops does have one significant advantage over football. You can play games a lot more frequently. Teams might have to play four or five games in four or five days at league tournaments. So it can be done. If you're out for two weeks, maybe you play three or four games for the next three or four weeks to make up for it. You can play games on days where you normally don't. Maybe you have a week where you play Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Is it ideal? Of course not. Little is these days. It will be hard. The games might not all be televised. Tough luck. Coaches and teams are going to have to adjust and do weird things if they want to get a season in. We're 12 days from the openers. We'll see how it goes.
- Last week, we mentioned South Carolina being a team to watch in the recruitment of Evans. It appears Oklahoma State is a contender to keep an eye on as well. The JUCO running back completed a virtual visit with the Cowboys' staff on Monday. Missouri is still pressing hard here as Evans is a guy they really want to add to their 2021 class that will give them solid depth and college experience.
- George is fresh off a Zoom call and virtual visit with Missouri's staff last week. We followed up with him over the weekend and asked what he likes about the program post virtual visit, he replied, "they probably have the best facilities I have ever seen, I love it, it's a really good fit for me." The JUCO defensive tackle also moved up his decision date to Thanksgiving day, November 26th. All signs are pointing to Missouri here.
- After delaying his October 8th commitment, Walker could be close to choosing a college towards the end of this month. Nothing has really changed when it comes to his top schools it appears - UCLA, Texas, Missouri, and Colorado are still in the mix. We don't get the impression that he's a take for Texas right now, so it's looking more like a three-team race. We're still pretty sure Missouri would take him, he's got an extensive history with Brick Haley and camped at Mizzou last summer. He has family in Los Angeles, so there is familiarity with the area there and of course, Colorado is the home state school. Hard to get a gauge on where he stands at this point, but it's something that could become a little clearer in the next few days.
- In case you missed our story on Missouri's latest addition, here is a rundown of why Ndoma-Ogar picked the Tigers as his new home. First, his grandparents live in Florissant so he's familiar with the Show Me State from that aspect. He also visited Missouri the spring before his senior season of high school and had a positive experience from that trip. He also is familiar with offensive line coach Marcus Johnson from his time at Duke when he visited there as a sophomore. He mentioned his conversations with Johnson and Eli Drinkwitz didn't feel scripted and he wants to be a part of what they are building in Columbia.
- Barber backed off his commitment from Minnesota on Monday night and with that comes new interest from other programs. Missouri is one of those programs that are showing interest in the three-star prospect out of Jacksonville. Purdue, West Virginia, Rutgers, Virginia Tech, Miami, and others have also reached out. Barber had his fair share of power five offers when he committed to the Gophers back in May that included Georgia Tech, Louisville, Duke, Ole Miss, and others.
BASKETBALL RECRUITING
Mizzou signed all five of its commitments in the 2021 class on Wednesday. You can get comments from the players and also from Cuonzo Martin in our story here.
We have long said that we didn't expect anything else to happen in the early signing period. There is currently one spot left if the seniors leave and everyone else returns. Martin said this week that he expects most seniors to move on. We are also anticipating this is the last year in CoMo for Xavier Pinson, which would give Missouri two spots left in this class (plus potentially any other offseason attrition). We would think the two spots will be used on transfers, but don't rule out a juco player if someone emerges in the spring.
SCHEDULING NOTES
Want to be clear the section is Gabe in case anyone gets mad at what could be a little pesssimistic, a little ranting and some things people here might not want to read. So if it makes you angry, direct the anger at me.
Let's start with football. The SEC is at the point of no return. I believe every team has been impacted somehow by COVID, either by having to skip or move a game because of issues in their own program or in their opponents. There's no more wiggle room (or at least it is EXTREMELY limited). There are already four games scheduled for December 12th. That's without a reschedule date for LSU/Alabama or Mizzou/Georgia. It's not too hard to put MU/UGA on December 19th because there's little to no chance either of those teams is in the SEC title game.
But Alabama almost certainly will be. Let's get one thing clear: The TV people (and they're the reason a season is happening--hopefully by now everyone is willing to admit that) want LSU/Bama to happen. Even if LSU isn't very good this year, that's still a ratings powerhouse. LSU has Arkansas, A&M, Ole Miss and Florida left. Bama has Kentucky, Auburn and Arkansas. You're not canceling the Iron Bowl. I could see a situation where LSU/Ole Miss and Bama/Kentucky are the games that end up getting axed to allow LSU and Bama to play (then could you have Ole Miss play Kentucky at some point?) Maybe LSU/Bama doesn't happen, but I bet they'll try to make it happen.
If no more games get postponed, you can probably make that work somehow. I'd categorize it as extremely optimistic that no more games get canceled. At this point, Mizzou and Auburn have issues that put next week in question as does LSU and Vandy has been flirting with the threshold all season. Any games that get pushed now simply have nowhere to go.
There is a solution: Just push the end of the season back. No one expects that to happen. There are a few reasons:
1) Nobody is in charge of college football. There's no commissioner to say "This is what we're doing." Every league makes its own rules. They've hardly worked together so far
2) The Rose Bowl has always been crazy stubborn about playing on Jan 1 at the same time and nobody thinks that will change. The Rose and the Sugar are this year's semifinal games and are scheduled for New Year's Day. They'll get much better ratings there than they would on January 16th. Even if it would make more sense to push thing back a couple weeks.
3) TV people (especially ESPN) want the other bowl games. The 12 days between league title games and the CFP playoffs are bowl time. A lot of people watch a lot of games they wouldn't otherwise watch because they're off work, the games are on and there aren't a lot of other options. Putting those games in the first two weeks in January likely kills ratings for all them.
TL;DNR version: It's a business. TV matters more than everything else. Also, nobody has ever shown much interest in cooperating to do things that make sense for everyone.
In an ideal world Mizzou has five games left and a bowl game. We'll see.
Now, let's talk basketball. Missouri's schedule is set. The Braggin' Rights game is in Columbia. The multi-team event will feature games against Oregon and Boston College, we believe, on Dec 2/3. It's possible there is one more game there, bringing the total to 26.
This is the part that probably won't make some happy because we said similar things this summer and it made people mad. We're not arguing whether the rules are right, wrong, fair, unfair or anything else. But they're the rules and the way we look at things is framed by then.
The simple truth is this: Hoops is much tougher to pull off than football. Social distancing at a football practice is doable. I'm not sure it is in basketball. If Xavier Pinson is guarding Dru Smith while you scrimmage, they're within six feet of each other the entire time pretty much. In addition, you've got 85 players in football. You can be down six linemen or two quarterbacks or 25 players total and have enough. In hoops, if one guy tests positive, your whole team is more or less done for two weeks. In other words, any team that has a positive test pretty much isn't playing for 14 days. There's no way around that.
And it's already happening
Now, hoops does have one significant advantage over football. You can play games a lot more frequently. Teams might have to play four or five games in four or five days at league tournaments. So it can be done. If you're out for two weeks, maybe you play three or four games for the next three or four weeks to make up for it. You can play games on days where you normally don't. Maybe you have a week where you play Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Is it ideal? Of course not. Little is these days. It will be hard. The games might not all be televised. Tough luck. Coaches and teams are going to have to adjust and do weird things if they want to get a season in. We're 12 days from the openers. We'll see how it goes.
