Rumors and more random thoughts....

Maty Mauk

If you don't follow football recruiting, then the name Maty Mauk won't mean a darned thing to you.  However, if you're a recruiting junkie it gets your palms just a little sweaty.  For those of you that aren't held hostage to this addiction, I'll tell you a little something about Mauk.  He's a 6'2", 185 pound quarterback from Ohio who's thrown for about 13,500 yards and 151 touchdowns in his first 3 years of high school.  He's one of the top 2 or 3 quarterbacks in the country, has offers from such programs as Michigan and Notre Dame, and there's a fair chance he's going to be giving his commitment to come to CoMO in 2012.  The Tigers have landed some pretty highly ranked recruits in Missouri, including guys like Blaine Gabbert, Sheldon Richardson and Jeremy Maclin, and recently starting picking up some 4 star kids out of Texas like Tristan Holt and recent verbal, Jonathan Williams.  But Mauk would be an anomoly.  He's from Kenyon freaking Ohio, not the normal Tiger recruiting ground.  Getting Mauk would signify that the Tigers are prepared to go head to head with anyone anywhere in the country for recruits.  The places Gary Pinkel has taken this program since his arrival is truly remarkable, even if there seems to be a head scratching loss every season.

Sheldon Richardson

And speaking of quarterbacks, we will, for the first time since August 31st when Brad Smith tore up defending Big Ten champion Illinois 33-20 in the first of 6 consecutive ass kickings Pinkel's Tigers have administered to the whining Illini.  You'd have to say that although James Franklin ended the spring period strong, that it's still way to early to call him the starter this fall.  Tyler Gabbert, and junior to be Ashton Glaser both showed signs this spring that they were more than capable of leading the Tiger offense.  While all 3 struggled at times, there's one thing you need to remember, and I'm dead serious about this.  The offense won't face many defenses as strong as the one they practice against.  If Sheldon Richardson indeed makes it on campus in June to add to a defensive tackle rotation that already includes guys like a hopefully healthy Dominique Hamilton, Terrel Resonno, Lucas Vincent and Marvin Foster to go along with the defensive ends, you are going to be a handful for offensive coordinators.  It's the kind of Missouri football I grew up watching and frankly, I can't wait.

Chris Freeman

I'm also hearing the Tigers will be committing more to rushing the football this year.  4 experienced tailbacks are returning and 4 seniors on the offensive line which was one of the best in the conference last year.  And what's even more amazing is the depth behind the starters.  Next year we'll be breaking in 4 new starters but will be picking them from kids named Gatti, Freeman, Demien, Meiners, Morse and Britt.  The Tigers are red shirting kids that would have come in as starters 5 years ago.   I'll be looking at more reports soon and trying to figure out what to look for this fall.  Until then, at least there's softball and baseball to talk about.  But now, I'm getting out of town for a few days much needed vacation.  Talk to you soon.  I'll try to keep up my scoreboard and some fun news stories and current events on my website.  I hope you'll stop by.

Spring game weekend. First one I've missed in years.

I love the spring football game.  I hated missing it this year but sometimes when we grow up things happen, and we have to do things that we don't love because we do things we just have to do.  By this time of year I'm pretty much in full withdrawal from football.  Basketball is ok, but the end of the season dramatics, courtesy of former coach what's his name, and it really wore me out.  I'm going to trust Mike Alden that we've picked the right guy, and I'm going to trust Frank Haith because it appears that he's made at least 2 home run hires for his new staff.  Baseball has started out great for us Royals fans, but it's a marathon, not a sprint.  I've seen enough quick starts that were followed by mid season collapses that I have no intention of investing too much passion right now. But we've got some history going with the football team now as they've won 48 games over the past 5 season.  So excuse me if I get excited reading practice reports and scrimmage statistics.

Maybe the biggest news of the day happened off the field as the Tigers obtained a verbal from Texas running back Jonathan Williams.  Williams rushed for over 2000 yards and 19 touchdowns as a junior and is ranked as the 33rd best player in Texas and the 3rd best running back in the nation.  It marks the 2nd year in a row that the Tigers have snagged a recruit rated inside the Texas top 50, (Last year both James Franklin and Tristan Holt were members of this club) and shows that Mizzou is a serious contender for the top Texas talent.  Jonathan is the kind of kid that starts a domino effect with other kids and does show why, during the feeding frenzy of conference realignment last summer, he really preferred that Missouri remain in the Big XII where he and his staff had spent years developing relationships.  It also shows that hick nation is now going to have to work a little harder if they intend to keep mining Texas for recruits.  Williams is exactly the kind of back they're looking for in Lincoln.

As far as the quarterback battle goes, James Franklin will now officially enter the summer months as # 1 at the position.  James had a good day, going 13 of 21 for 116 yards and 2 touchdowns to go with a 139.7 quarterback rating.  Tyler Gabbert however was 8 of 22 for 48 yards and a rating of 45.6.  This isn't going to end until sometime next August at the earliest, but I fully expect the competition to make both of them better.  For complete stats, Dave Matter has an excellent breakdown in his blog. So now we'll be reaching for football news, but it's going to be out there and I'll try to find as much of it as I can.  Stop by and see my current event section on my web page.

Quick hits

Lost in the shuffle of the opening day loss, 4-2 to the Los Angeles Angels, something we're probably going to see a lot of this season, was the reopening of the George Brett Bridge in time for the first pitch.  It was really remarkable to me that the contractor, Clarkson Construction was able to get this done in the time allotted.  The bridge was imploded on January 14th, following the Chiefs final game, which was later than expected following a season that included a home playoff game.  Had the bridge, with it's I 70 access not been completed in time, it would have been all that much tougher a sell to get people into Kauffman Stadium.  Realistically the Royals could struggle to avoid losing 100 games again this year.  But it does make it easier for us to make a snap decision to head out to the park on a warm summer evening.

To Missouri fan who's self loathing knows no limit seems to be uninformed as to what is what's going on with Oklahoma's search for a basketball coach.  Athletic Director Joe Castiglione has now struck out with his first 4 choices after firing Jeff Capel.  Local media guy Kevin Harlan said on the Border Patrol said that coaches seemed to be running away from the job and apparently he's correct.  At last count Bruce Weber, Dave Rose, Lon Kruger and Buzz Williams have declined offers from the Sooners.  Apparently a portion of the OU fan base is worrying that they're about to drop into obscurity in the new Big XII conference and they'll become the new Nebraska, all football.  It's odd when so many of our fans wish we had Joe C. back in CoMO instead of Alden.  OU makes between 30 and 40 million a year than the Tigers and aren't having much luck showing anymore success.  And if you want to mention how far ahead their football program is to ours, may I at least remind you of the score last season.

Speaking of football, there was nothing going on with the students out on spring break, but there's a lot of speculation that James Franklin being the starting quarterback on September 3rd at the opener against Miami of Ohio may be premature.  Tyler Gabbert has continued to look good leading the offense and has moved into pretty much a co-number 1 right now.  Brad Madison, while not making people forget about Aldon Smith appears to be developing into a dominant pass rusher, and Kony Ealy may well move into the 3rd spot in the rotation.  Despite losing 3 starters the defensive backfield looks to have more talent than ever.  If Dominique Hamilton comes back from an injury and Sheldon Richardson makes it on campus this could be a very formidable defense.  Some questions still on the offensive side of the ball, including the young receivers moving up and threatening for jobs and whether one of the running backs will be able to stake a claim as the premier back.      

Basketball season's over. Time to talk a little Gary Pinkel.

Basketball season ended with a thud last night as the Tigers fell 78-63 to Cincinnati last night.  I'm going to talk about that some as I get a chance to read a little more and watch as the Mike Anderson questions play themselves out.  But spring football is going on, Blaine Gabbert just completed his Pro Day exhibition and we have a quarterback question for the first time since Brad Smith's red shirt freshman year.  Since that day Mizzou has entered spring ball knowing exactly who the starting quarterback was going to be.  The fact that we don't know at the moment is due to the fact that Pinkel has recruited well enough that he's making a decision between two highly rated players that held multiple offers before picking the Tigers.   

Brad Smith carried the Tigers on his back during his time in CoMO and never had the advantage of having the talent around him that Chase Daniel and Blaine Gabbert had, but Brad also just didn't have the luxury of Gabberts arm or Daniel's decision making ability and swagger.  The Tigers would probably have won more games had they decided to let Brad be Brad and run an option attack such as Nebraska in their prime.  However, I doubt Chase Daniel would ever have wound up in Columbia on Saturday's if it hadn't been for the wide open attack the Tigers were committed to playing.  For that matter I don"t believe talent like Jeremy Maclin, Will Franklin, Danario Alexander, Chase Coffman and Martin Rucker would have played here, not to mention young guns like Bud Sasser, Marcus Lucas and Jimmy Hunt.  Pinkel made a conscious decision to place the program ahead of the current state of that team and has won 40 games the last 4 years by sticking to that decision.

As I said, I don't have any idea who will be taking snaps for the Tigers in September.  The 2 prime suspects would be between James Franklin and Tyler Gabbert.  Both have been making their case as to why they should be the starter this fall, but that won't be decided for some time yet, at least in my opinion.  I do think the winner will be more than capable of leading the team in what will be a much tougher conference.  I'm excited for the news over the summer and watching how things develop.  I've always been a football guy first.  But as I said, next time I'm going to talk about my feeling following a disappointing end to what began as a promising basketball season.

Some questions heading into spring ball. The offense......

We're a little over 2 weeks away from the start of spring football.  That means we now have less than two months with no college football to follow.  Now I happen to consider that about 6 weeks too many, but then I'm something of a fanatic.  The Tigers return 35 of the 44 players in the 2 deep from last year so you wouldn't expect there to be a lot of questions, but early departures by quarterback Blaine Gabbert and defensive end Aldon Smith created a couple of unexpected holes.  I'm going to talk about some of the questions on the offense today, which has to start with, who's going to be the guy pulling the trigger for the offense now that BG has left for the NFL?  The smart money says it's going to come down to 2 guys that were freshmen last year, James Franklin and Blaine's younger brother Tyler.  Both were highly regarded prospects coming out of high school and appear to be capable of taking over for Blaine, who in my opinion was under-appreciated by Tiger nation.  It can't have been easy following Chase Daniel who's always going to be considered a legend in Columbia following that magnificent 2007 season.  But let's remember that CD had guys like Maclin, Franklin, Coffman, Rucker and Saunders to throw to.  In Blaine's first season when he had Danario Alexander still around he had numbers that were very similar to Chases' sophomore season.  He just lacked the game breaker last year, other than TJ Moe's last minute catch against San Diego State and Jerrell Jackson's catch against OU in the 4th quarter that put the Tigers back in the lead to stay.  If I was handicapping this, I'd have to go with Franklin, but guys that watch the team daily say don't go to sleep on Tyler Gabbert.  If I was a betting man, which I'm not I'm guessing the loser of the battle could well transfer following the season, along with 3rd stringer Ashton Glaser who appears to be the odd man out.  Incoming freshman Corbin Berkstressor had a great senior season but I expect to see him red shirt this year.

The one loss that was expected was center Tim Barnes graduating.  For the past 2 years Travis Ruth was expected to be the successor, but it seems most everyone is talking about a lightly regarded kid from Lebanon, Missouri as most likely to be the starter this fall.  Justin came from my neck of the woods and may well be the first kid to start on a division 1 program.  He was also scorned as a 5.4 two star player who many felt was offered simply to fill up slots.  However, he's been praised by the staff since the day he got on campus due to his work ethic and understanding of the game.  He's yet another exhibit as to why we shouldn't take Rivals or Scouts rankings too seriously.  Actually, after guys like Alexander, Weatherspoon and Hood we should have had some idea that the coaches had some idea what they were doing, but then we wouldn't be Missouri fans.  If it teaches us anything though, we should realize that kids that are really good wrestlers in high school understand the concept of leverage and be able to transfer that to football.  Justin was a two time state champion in the heavyweight division.

At running back, the Tigers went with mostly a three headed, but sometimes four headed monster during the season.  All of the backs experienced some success, but the fact is, it's hard to recruit backs to the system unless you have someone that breaks out as a feature guy.  I know the Tigers realize this, especially with the difficulties they've had recruiting the big name kids, even those that are residents of the Show Me State.  All four of the returners are similar in that they're smallish guys with bursts of speed.  All are capable of breaking the big play any time they touch the ball, but questionable in their ability to break tackles and get the tough yards.  If indeed they attempt to get more touches to one guy, then I'm going to guess, and it's just a guess that the top two getting their chance to shine would be junior Kendial Lawrence and sophomore Henry Josey.  Both were highly regarded kids out of Texas and show more speed than De'Vion Moore, who was usually the starter last year, and Marcus Murphy, who spent the year as the deep man on kickoffs.  And don't rule out red shirt freshman Greg White as a potential short yardage guy.

One spot that you'd think with no questions would be at wide receiver with all three starters returning, but I'm convinced the team has to find a deep threat.  Last year the Tigers brought in three highly regarded recruits, although two of them were red shirted.  Marcus Lucas shed his shirt, but only made three catches last year, although he gained PT as the season went along.  I see him in sort of the D. Alexander mold; a tall receiver with good hands and deceptive speed that's capable of turning a short pass over the middle into a long gain.  Hopefully he can be nearly as effective and healthy.  For sheer speed, give me a look at the two kids that red shirted, Jimmie Hunt and Bud Sasser.  I expect both to earn plenty of playing time this year.  You also have to remember the kid everyone from the 'Lou was raving about a couple of years ago, Rolandis Woodland.  There's no doubt the kid is a burner.  Now he has to show he knows the playbook and can bring in the critical catch when it's prime time. I believe TJ Moe is a lock to hold on to his spot, but if I'm Jerrell Jackson or Wes Kemp, I'm making sure to get in some extra work this off season.  There are a lot of young lions looking to take your spot.
That's all for today.  I imagine we'll talk about how the basketball team fared this week next time, but when I get back to football, we'll discuss the defense.  Hope your weeks going well for you.