Mizzou Links, 6-26-13

Mining diamonds in the rough on the recruiting trail, getting ready for the draft, and tweaking some basketball rules.

By Bill Connelly@SBN_BillC Jun 26, 2013, 5:19am CDT

1. New football commit: Zach Hudson

I'm going to write about this at some point soon, but ... this is just the weirdest damn recruiting class that I can remember. Mizzou continues to unearth new commits out of the blue, and while almost all of them have been completely unheralded from either a rankings or "other offers" standpoint, they're still getting offers from Missouri rather early in the recruiting process. It's hard to call Mizzou desperate or accuse the staff of reaching on these guys -- it's not like Mizzou's sitting at 10 commitments in mid-January 2013 here; one would think that they would be holding as many spots as possible open on the off chance that things improve dramatically on the field this fall, but they're seeing enough from an athletic and film standpoint to make early offers, and they're pulling in commits ... from guys other major conference schools either haven't noticed or haven't cared to offer. It is Mizzou's decade-long Texas strategy on steroids.

Mizzou now has 12 commits before July 1. The Tigers had 10 in 2013 (well, 10 that ended up sticking ... that's a decent-sized asterisk), six in 2012, seven in 2011, six in 2010, 12 in 2009, eight in 2008, and five in 2007. This is usually seen as a sign of either in-state momentum (because a good portion of early Mizzou commits have tended to be in-staters before this year) or program momentum overall. This year, only five of 12 commits are from Missouri, and only two of 12 have ratings better than a 5.5 three-star by Rivals. But Mizzou's still offering and still getting commits. I ... have no idea what to think about this class. It is defying the logic we have come to lean on for all previous classes, and that could be very, very good or very, very bad. Can you be full of optimism and dread at the same time?

Regardless ... Zach Hudson is a big boy at 6'6, 270, with room to grow. And his film certainly shows a mean streak.