It’s time for Missouri’s biggest basketball recruiting weekend in quite a while

GO TIME! It doesn’t appear Illinois has released Jeremiah Tilmon from his Letter of Intent yet, so we don’t know if all the hoped-for visitors will be in town (Tilmon cannot visit until he is released), but we know that Mizzou is still hosting two visitors, plus, in theory, both 2017 commits — Michael Porter Jr. and C.J. Roberts.

Dave Matter sets the scene.

Knox and Porter are playing in the Nike Summit Friday night in Portland, Ore., then taking a late flight to Missouri to be in Columbia Saturday for their weekend visit. Blake Harris, a three-star guard from Raleigh, N.C., is also visiting Mizzou this weekend. Like Porter, Harris signed with Washington in the fall but was released from his letter of intent after the school fired coach Lorenzo Romar. C.J. Roberts, a four-star guard from Dallas who signed with MU last fall, is making travel plans to be in Columbia, too, his father, Craig Roberts, confirmed Thursday. [...]

Mizzou’s overnight roster turnaround could be unprecedented, [Rivals.com’s Corey] Evans said.

“It’s kind of like LeBron James,” Evans said. “I don’t want to compare Porter to LeBron James, but guys want to play with the tip-top guys. It’s like when LeBron went to Cleveland and guys wanted to follow him.”

Gabe Dearmond adds some magnitude.

This weekend of visits--and whatever may come out of it—would change the course Martin must chart this year. The best analogy I can come up with is the trade deadline in baseball. In late July, every GM has to decide: Am I good enough to win it all? And then he must make moves accordingly.

What comes out of this weekend will give Martin his answer. Does he have a team good enough to improve some and get back to respectability? Or does he have a team good enough to go all in and really try to make a run in year one?

Ron Davis points out that there are, to some degree, some football parallels here.

The weekend has a similar feel to the football team's recruitment of the "Tiger 10" back in February. Barry Odom courted 10 of the top in-state prospects he's offered for one collective wooing and to promote the appeal of playing together. Martin is taking a comparable approach but on a national level.

Meanwhile, Martin has in no way given up on four-star guard Mark Smith either. He had an in-home visit in Edwardsville yesterday. A lot of people did, actually.

Mizzou’s best hopes with Smith come via ripple effect — land Knox, land Tilmon, create a tidal wave of sorts. We’ll see.

Oh yeah, and in-home visits start soon for 2018 stars like Whitfield’s Torrence Watson. Recruiting is endless.

More Links:

• Mizzou Baseball experienced some massive travel woes trying to Athens for the series against Georgia. The game was postponed for a little while, and when the Tigers showed up ... they found they had left their offense on the bus. Georgia 3, Mizzou 0. Seven losses in a row, and now by margins more than one run.
• He’s had fewer save opportunities of late, but TJ Sikkema was still named first-team PerfectGame Rawlings Midseason All-American. I mean, it’s hard to top “5-0 with three saves and a 0.47 ERA.”
• Lauren Reedy: SEC Diver of the Year. Hell yeah.
• Mizzou Tennis’ last home duals of the year are this weekend, naturally against two ranked SEC foes — No. 24 Tennessee and No. 2 Georgia.
• Mizzou Track & Field is off to Alabama.
• It took forever to get them confirmed, but Mizzou officially has new curators, and Daryl Chatman can now officially be described as “linebacker-turned-curator” from this point forward.
• Ben Askren, 15-0 as an MMA professional, is fighting again soon.

• Finally, SBN’s Richard Johnson asked a bunch of people where they were and what they were doing during when Auburn Kick Six’d Alabama. I answered.

I was tailgating for the biggest Mizzou home game in forever. We were sort of keeping up with the Iron Bowl, and on the way to the stadium, we were trying to find out if Auburn had tied.

“Wait, they WON??”

It was like the slowest game of telephone as everybody figured out what happened (with terrible in-stadium cell signal). And then they showed it on the jumbotron. Somebody in the student section scribbled “AUBURN” over their “We Want Bama” sign.

That led me back to this piece, which I wrote the Monday afterward.

And of course, my boys got it done as well. I love you too much for words, Henry Josey.

Ugh, my eyes are watery. Must be the dry air or something. Yeah, that must be it.