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Mizzou Links, 11-22-11

By Bill Connelly
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Mizzou Basketball Links

@rockmnation
Rock M Nation Goodness.
Nov 22 via TweetDeckFavoriteRetweetReply

Mizzou Football Links

@PeteScantlebury
Pete Scantlebury Four-star Lee's Summit West OL Evan Boehm has informed me that he decommitted from #Mizzou this evening.
Nov 22 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

@BIGboehmTHEORY
Evan Boehm I really am sorry its one of the toughtest things I've had to do! Mizzou is still on my list I'm just confused right now! sorry guys
Nov 22 via Twitter for AndroidFavoriteRetweetReply

So Evan Boehm is, for now at least, no longer a Mizzou commitment. That is, I believe, either three or four decommits over the past few weeks. There are two reactions you can take here:

1) Recruiting is falling apart, and Mizzou is doomed.

2) Wait and see.

I assume you know which one I am going to take. First, we should acknowledge that the move to the SEC has potentially had some negative short-term consequences that we didn't necessarily expect. Well, the move to the SEC, combined with a 4-5 start to the season, a fantastic season from Arkansas (which is getting some visits from Mizzou commits) and, now, the head coach getting a DWI and suspension.

Mizzou has rebounded on the field, and I'm sure PInkel will make quite the barnstorming, hat-in-hand trip to quite a few recruits' houses once the Kansas game is over. Maybe that will stem the tide. (Remember: this time last year, Mizzou fans were freaking the hell out because Sheldon Richardson had committed to USC.) And maybe it won't. Maybe all of the potentially angry Kansas City folks are in Evan Boehm's ear like the StL folks were in Adrian Clayborn's ear way back when, and maybe he'll find a school he just likes more. Maybe one of the Texas kids who decommitted a while back will still sign. Or ... maybe this is a lost recruiting class.

Recruiting truly is its own sport. You win or lose battles and classes, then you go back to watching the games on the actual playing field, and maybe the wins and losses will eventually coincide with real wins and losses. Mizzou survived the loss of Clayborn in recruiting, just as they turned the 'lost' recruiting class of 2005 into a game-changer. Similarly, a lot of the most highly-touted players from the highly-ranked 2010 recruiting class (Nick Demien, Tyler Gabbert, Tristen Holt, Jimmie Hunt) have failed to produce just yet. As we've discussed many times, recruiting rankings are all about odds; the better the recruit or class, the better odds of success. But the last decade of Mizzou Football has done nothing but prove that good or bad odds are not guarantees.

If Mizzou were to crash and burn in recruiting this year ... if they weren't to sign a single recruit ... they would still be pretty good next year, and they would get another recruiting class to shore up the failures from this one. You can absorb the impact of a poor recruiting class as long as you redouble your efforts and don't let it happen again. It would be a damn shame if this year -- with such high-end talent in the state of Missouri -- was the year all of these factors came together to ruin a recruiting class, but Mizzou will move on and hope it doesn't cost them next year. That's really all you can say. Maybe Boehm still becomes a Tiger, and hell, maybe DGB joins him. But if or when they don't, Mizzou will still be pretty good next year, and they'll have a chance to rectify recruiting after all the internal and external factors that have slowed them down this year.

Other Football Links

God bless you, Twitter. This was fun.

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