The Morning Commute for Friday May 16, 2025

Welcome to the Morning Commute

Today we’re talking about losing out on High School recruits.

If there’s any reason to not place too much emphasis on high school recruiting, it might be this last recruitment with top 40 Arkansas wing J.J. Andrews:

My take on this is pretty clear and straightforward. Andrews was Arkansas recruit to lose as long as they made him a priority. For much of the last year or more (since John Calipari took over as the Arkansas coach) this has not been the case.

Without Arkansas prioritizing a good, but not elite, level prospect, there was room for another school to come in and make Andrews look around. Missouri has had success with area prospects and even as recent as Annor Boateng plucked a higher level prospect out from under the grimy hands of the Arkansas faithful.

But Andrews and Boateng were never the same recruitment. Boateng and his family were not Arkansas natives. Andrews father was a Hog legacy, having played football at Arkansas back under Houston Nutt.

The main difference between these two recruitments was whether John Calipari and his staff were going to make J.J. a priority? They finally did and it was recent. That was all it took.

Cal is a lot of things, but he’s an elite level recruiter and if there’s a kid he can get and he has a leg up… you’re done for. Obviously recurring to Arkansas and Kentucky is different, but not enough to overcome the legacy aspect. Something local Arkansas kids seem to have in droves.

Regardless, it stinks for Missouri. But it’s not the end of the world. Good players are all over the place and Cal hasn’t proven he can develop players year over year the way Dennis Gates has shown with multi-year prospects. Maybe Annor Boateng is due for a breakout?

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Yesterday at Rock M and Rock M+

Quiet day yesterday other than the whole… ya know, losing out on a priority basketball recruit.

• Mizzou Baseball takes on MSU:

Mizzou is coming off some momentum after their sweep over Texas A&M last weekend, and I’m sure that will get Mississippi State’s full attention. The Bulldogs are now in a better position to make the NCAA Tournament more so than the Aggies, so Mississippi State should win this series. However, things are starting to come together for this Mizzou team and the Tigers will have enough healthy talent to at least get their first SEC win at home.

Not super prescient to begin with, but Mizzou gave up twenty five runs in game one. And shockingly enough they did not score 26 to win the first game.

They lost.

• Over at Rock M+, we’re talking about losing CROOTS:

The commit date was also set far enough in advance — almost a month! — that it gave Arkansas time to rally. I had never heard about NIL being a factor. So, I don’t think it was there solely to create a biding situation. But a deadline gave the staff time to bring Cal around, and we know he can bigfoot a recruitment

Bleh. But stay tuned for a 2026 update ($) from Matt Harris this morning.

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