Missouri’s in-state recruiting obviously matters, but does it match angst levels?

As far as I can tell, I began following recruiting in earnest around 1999 or so, before Rivals became a full-on pay site. I remember when Jon Kirby, now of Jayhawk Slant, was the main guy at PowerMizzou. I remember lots and lots of recruiting battles and freakouts. And this PowerMizzou post brought back a lot of memories.

Basically, Gabe Dearmond went back to 2002 (as far back as the current Rivals database goes) to look at the history of Missouri’s in-state misses and freakouts. Obviously Mizzou’s Tiger 10 hopes have long since died, and the angst levels among Mizzou fans on the Internet has been ... predictable. Program’s doomed, go ahead and fire Odom, etc. But if the last 15 years have taught us anything, it’s that in-state recruiting is the first step toward Mizzou succeeding on the field, but it certainly isn’t the last.

With each batch of in-state misses, Gabe assigned a “Freak Out Level.” My own memory suggests most of them are pretty accurate. A sample:

• 2003: Medium-High (key miss: Laurence Maroney)
• 2004: Low (key miss: Brett Gallimore)
• 2005: High (key miss: Chris Brooks)
• 2006: Medium-High (key miss: Adrian Clayborn)
• 2007: “Borderline Extreme” (key misses: Rock Bridge’s Aron White and Logan Gray)

This was a major period of angst for Mizzou fans — even as Gary Pinkel was showing signs of solid program building, he was proving that he wasn’t going to land 90-100% of his in-state guys. I mean, of course he wasn’t.

But even while missing on Maroney and Clayborn in particular hurt, Mizzou still went from 5-6 in 2004 to 7-5 in 2005, then 8-5 in 2006, then 12-2 in 2007 and 10-4 in 2008. Mizzou could have very much used Maroney in the backfield and Clayborn on the D-line; those were the very definition of costly misses. But the Tigers went out and won anyway.

There’s still reasonably legitimate hope that, with a decent fall campaign, Mizzou can still land four or so of the Tiger 10. We’ll see how things play out. Hell, hopefully things go great this fall and they land five or six. But if they don’t, they’ll still have a chance to land guys they like and win games, freakouts or no freakouts.

Lists! More lists!

Memphis ATH Kundarrius Taylor’s top six:

Manvel, Tex., WR Kam Scott’s top 6:

Cypress, Tex., receiver Taye Barber’s top 12.

Meanwhile, Orlando cornerback Tanner Ingle says he’ll be committing soon.

More Links:

• The folks at All22.com took a look at former Tiger Josh Augusta’s chances of making the Patriots’ roster. The prognosis: He chose a good team from the perspective of depth chart and opportunity, but ... he’s gotta cut some weight.
• You’ll never guess who was named The Trib’s male and female athlete of the year. (Okay, yeah, you’ll guess it pretty easily.) The Trib also put together a pretty solid year-in-review summary. It was a pretty great year for Mizzou athletics ... as long as you, uh, don’t pay that much attention to football and men’s basketball. Granted, the Porter family made sure that Mizzou Hoops went pretty well after the season ended.
• Key 2019 hoops recruit Mario McKinney Jr. got an offer from Mizzou this weekend ... again.

• Former Mizzou hoops assistant Brad Loos joined ABC-17’s Sunday night sports program to give an update on what he’s doing and how his daughter Rhyan is doing.

• I was traveling last week and couldn’t give this the full promotional blitz it deserves, but ... the Stubble Drive! Donate to it if you haven’t! We’ve lagged behind this year.