We all take a collective deep breath and hold...**

So where is E.J. Liddell headed?

Don’t ask the collective sources of Alex Schiffer:

I’ve heard from trusted sources that he’s going to Missouri, Ohio State and Illinois, all of his final three schools. Props to the family for keeping this air tight.

Out of the three schools, I do feel the momentum favors Ohio State and Missouri. Watch, Illinois Twitter is now going to come after me.

Despite Schiffer’s sources being all over the map I agree with Schiffer himself. All the information we have here is that Missouri and Ohio State were the leaders all along and Illinois was running catch up. Basically E.J. supposedly has a close relationship with Cuonzo Martin and Chris Holtmann and hadn’t really bonded to Brad Underwood in the same way. If you pay attention to those in Illinois media, it’s just the opposite.

So Ohio State is worried about Missouri, Missouri is worried about Ohio State, and neither are worried about Illinois.

The Liddell’s have done a great job of keeping this all under wraps which has kept everyone guessing. So for all we really know the Illini media may actually be right. I’ll at least admin that I think THIS Illinois media member is right:

And this is where we get down to brass tacks. The purported leader for months has been Ohio State, this has been mostly guess work but we’re also talking about most of the respected national recruiting writers like Eric Bossi, Brian Snow, Jerry Meyer, and Andrew Slater. And again, Missouri has long viewed Ohio State as the biggest threat, meaning the Buckeyes were likely long the team to beat.

Knowing this, I think this is why Missouri played their hand the way they did. They moved up the visit date of E.J.’s longtime friend Mario McKinney to join him on the official visit, they played up the connections to the roster by having Mark Smith play host. They surrounded him with his friends currently on the roster like Jeremiah Tilmon, Javon Pickett, and Torrence Watson. They played their top hand and hoped for the best.

So while the easy (and probably correct) play would be to lay the bet on Ohio State, there’s enough of a reason to hope E.J. could shock everyone and pick the Tigers. But if he doesn’t, we’ll have full coverage on every step the Tigers coaches make as they figure out what to do instead.

Yesterday at Rock M

More Links:

• Bye week is officially over. Thank God.
• Dave Matter spent some time talking to senior analysts for Mizzou Football and the outcome was an interesting bye week article.
• Mizzou Women’s Volleyball dropped their first conference game of the season to Tennessee on Friday.
• Keegan Pope talked to Mizzou Basketball assistant coach Cornell Mann’s son, Maliq Carr ($). Carr holds offers from both Cuonzo Martin and Barry Odom as a 6’5 215 lb Wide Receiver or a Small Forward.

**do not do this, this was figurative