What has been the success rate of Mizzou’s big recruiting weekends?

The calendar has turned to June, and Missouri still has just two commitments for its 2024 high school recruiting class. Is that concerning? We’ve covered that. The answer is basically a big ‘ole shrug emoji.

It’s a slow start, to be sure. But it’s not the end of the world. Missouri has not yet hosted its annual ‘big recruiting weekend’ in which Missouri rolls out the red carpet for some of their top targets in the 2023 class.

This has become an annual tradition of sorts. It’s not exclusive to Missouri, but it’s something that’s become a bigger and bigger deal over the past 5-10 years. I’m guessing a lot of that has to do with social media, but that’s a different discussion for a different day.

Missouri has enjoyed varying degrees of “success” from these staple early summer recruiting visits under Eli Drinkwitz over the past two years.

Here’s a reminder of the “big” recruiting weekend uncommitted visitors the past two years:

• 2021 — Jadon Scarlett, Hayden Schwartz, Jalen Marshall, DeShawn Woods, James Pearce, Tavorus Jones
• 2022 ‘The Summit’ — Jyaire Hill, Amir Herring, Nicholas DeLoach, Jamal Roberts, Corey Kelly, Marvin Burks, Logan Reichert, Cayden Green, Joshua Manning

None of the 2021 visitors committed to the Tigers “immediately,” but Jones, Marshall and Woods were all committed to Mizzou within the next two weeks. The 2022 ‘Summit’ resulted in even more fireworks. DeLoach and Roberts committed while they were on campus in Columbia. Manning was close to committing to Kansas State, but paused that decision and committed to Missouri by late July. Reichert (September) and Burks (December) both waited until later in their respective processes to ultimately make their pledges.

In total, eight of the 15 previously uncommitted official visitors committed to Mizzou. The only one to back off of that pledge before signing was Woods, and that was reportedly due to academic reasons.

This year’s ‘big recruiting weekend’ is coming up in a couple weeks with nine known official visitors, according to Rivals. That list includes four different 4-stars and a five star (Ryan Wingo).

If past trends are any indication, the Tigers should hope to land a commitment from roughly half of the players who make it campus for their official visit weekend at the end of June. That would provide a necessary shot of adrenaline to a recruiting class that has been stalled over the past couple months. Not all of those commitments will happen immediately. Some might not be announced publicly until the fall. But making it on campus for this kind of visit in the middle of the summer is a good sign.

Next up, we wait to find out the final list of attendees, and hope like heck that at least half of them end up at Mizzou.