2017 Tiger Mailbag: 3rd Edition

GD: I love odds questions where I can give a percentage and then you guys can hold me to them. It always turns out well for me!

That said, Jaylen Twyman told me he's deciding on National Signing Day, so I wouldn't anticipate a commitment. I would think chances are very good that Malik Young visits. I would say 51/49 that Reyondous Estes doesn't make that trip and I would say 95/5 that Jeff Thomas doesn't visit. Mac Jones had an in-home with Nick Saban last week and his official to Alabama this weekend. I'd say maybe a 20% chance he visits Columbia. And that might be high.

GD: Yes

GD: I hate to keep saying the same thing on all coaching search related questions, but the simple truth is I don't know. And I don't know because NOBODY knows. Nobody around here knows Jim Sterk well enough to know who he'll look at, what he values, etc. I'm pretty confident that Brian White, who is the basketball liaison for the AD and the son of Duke AD Kevin White, will be very involved in the process when it comes time. That said, Missouri has a coach for at least another seven weeks and while I'm sure there is some clandestine activity going on, Sterk isn't going to be sharing it with people. Any "news"--or more accurately rumor--that comes out, is almost certainly going to be coming from the side of prospective coaches and their agents. And that's pretty tough info to trust.

GD: Now that he's got an offer from Texas, I'd have to say Elijah Gardiner until we hear otherwise.

GD: Any athletic director worth his salt always has a list. Even if he doesn't anticipate ever having to use it, he's got a list of five to ten guys that "if something happens and I have to find a coach, these are the guys I want to talk to." Obviously every guy will run his search a little bit differently. Mack Rhoades was the most, ummm, thorough (i.e. slow) that I've seen. I don't know if Sterk is that way. You wouldn't think so because there will be plenty of time to prepare.

A big part of this is who he wants to target. Are the prospects going to be coaching in March? And how long? That's going to delay anything that might happen. The logical time to make a hire is the week or two after the Final Four, but if your guy is done sooner, there's nothing that says you can't make a move then.

Realistically, my guess is that Sterk knows the guys he's going to look at and there may have been a call or two strategically placed to say "Hey, IF we decide we need to move at the end of the season, would your guy be interested in talking?" But none of those discussions are going to happen until after both Missouri's season and the prospective coach's season are over. I'd anticipate a search firm because it seems like everybody uses them for the purpose of having plausible deniability these days.

GD: I'm not going to give you a percentage, but I'm still operating under the belief that he'll coach out the season and any announcement would come either after the last regular season game or after the SEC Tournament. As for your other question, I don't know. And anybody that tells you they do is lying. They can guess, but they don't know.

GD: First of all, you do it that way because often times the coaches want it done that way. They've been recruiting somewhere for a year and don't want to leave that school high and dry two weeks before signing day. Also, he's had a couple guys leave unexpectedly on him, so he probably wants to make absolutely sure that he's getting the right guy who won't bolt on him in nine months (or nine days, a la Chris Wilson). And the reality is, anybody you hire now isn't going to help a ton wrapping up prospects in the next two weeks, so it probably does make more sense to have Ofodile, who these kids know, having the freedom to contact them and recruit them.

GD: Not my decision to make. If the coaches think so, great. It would give me a headache, but if they deem the headaches worth it, so be it. On your second question, I'm sure there are, but few of them seem to play out so publicly or garner as much attention. I would bet it won't be very easy for Randy Edsall to recruit Raritan High School in New Jersey from here on out.

GD: I want to be clear that I'm not trying to offend you with this answer and I do understand the question. I just don't know why it much matters. The bottom line is the basketball program is in as bad a place as it has been in my lifetime and nobody should be happy about that. For this season and where they are right now, to me, this is 100% on Kim Anderson. Yeah, they're young and inexperienced and have a lot of new guys. Well, that's on Kim. He chose to do it that way.

I said at the end of last year that I would have understood if Missouri chose to fire him then. But I also got the logic to not doing so. You give him this year with a roster full of guys only he recruited, only he signed and only he coached. And you see what they can do. If they improved, that's good, you go forward. If they didn't, you have all the proof you need. I know many will argue they already had all the proof they need, but there was a good portion of the fanbase who would have looked at firing him after just two seasons as unfair. Based on feedback I get, I would say that portion of the fanbase is at about one percent after this season. Three years is enough time to turn a basketball program around...or at least get it pointed significantly in the right direction. That hasn't happened.

I have said for quite some time that Kim's biggest mistake was not cleaning house in year one. If he didn't like the game or the character of people on the team, he should have jettisoned them ASAP. Don't keep guys like Namon Wright and Wes Clark and Tramaine Isabell for another year. If you want to get rid of them, get rid of them. You'll be awful in year one and probably in year two, but in year three, you'll have some juniors and maybe seniors on the team. Instead, he took two years to clean house and now year three is where they should have been two years ago. I also believe it's a coach's job to try to turn some of those kids around and convince them to stay and make them better players and better teammates. You can't just say, "You want out? Good, we didn't want you anyway," to every kid. I don't know if this team is good with Wright and J3 and Teki Gill-Caesar but I'm relatively confident it's quite a bit better. I understand some of the situations and some of the kids had to go. I've got a hard time believing that every one of them had to.

Frank Haith deserves some blame, although, again, by now, that should have been dealt with and in the past. Mike Alden (and whoever was involved in taking the hiring power away from him) does too. I won't listen to anyone that says Mike Anderson deserves any of it anymore.

GD: I've got to go with Spoon. Kentrell was really good, but Spoon was at another level.

Best shooter is Jabari Brown (because five years eliminates Denmon).

Best big? Oy. Ryan Rosburg probably.

I'll take Mizzou to win seven in the regular season next year.

On the writers, I read a lot of guys. Wright Thompson is one of the best writers and profilers in the country. I love Pat Forde's work. I would read Joe Posnanski writing about my couch because he could make it interesting. Andy McCullough, who covered the Royals for two years and now covers the Dodgers for the LA Times, is the best beat writer I've ever read regularly. Those are guys that jump out, but there are many more.

GD: Doug Smith and Anthony Peeler. I didn't have to think about that for two seconds.

GD: We'll do the tailgate as usual and cover the game. When times are set, we'll get you guys info.

GD: 1. I would think so. I don't even know who was on the Missouri team when Zeke was a freshman. Probably Josey and Murphy. They're good backs. Elliott is at another level.

2. Like any good AD (I mean publisher) I am constantly updating my list.

GD: I'm sure that Norm will absolutely support Kim until the bitter end. Publicly, I think everyone at Missouri will. I think privately they would also say that Missouri basketball is bigger than any one person and if a change is what's needed to improve the program, they'd be on board. Will there be some that are angry if Kim is fired and feel it is unjust? I'm sure there will be. There always are. Especially when so many people around here have known and liked Kim for so long.

GD: Because Kim Anderson is searching for ANYTHING that will work. And so far nothing has. It's a very fair question. I mean, how do you go from second in the SEC in minutes to single-digit minutes? It certainly looks like an indication that he was playing way too much at the beginning of the year, which is what many people were saying at the time. Cullen has always been far too much of a focal point for this team's problems. Was he part of the problem? Absolutely. But NEVER as much a part as posters on this site wanted to make him. And the fact that he's barely playing now and they're still not winning proves that.

GD: Right now, yes, it's unjustified. I don't think you need to have any angst until some of the guys they're chasing are actually off the board. If they can get Palmore, Young and at least one of the high school guys, I don't think there's reason to be too concerned. If they miss on all those guys, yeah, you can worry. I think they'll still land at least three.

GD: I think it's department policy and assume Sterk could change it if he wanted to. Missouri retires way too many numbers. I don't think they should retire any. Put a football player's name on the wall, hang a basketball player's number in the rafters, but you don't need to retire any numbers. There are far, far more successful programs than Mizzou that have retired far, far fewer numbers.

GD: Yeah, I would think the staff has a handful of schools that they'd like to send kids to. The Kansas jucos make the most sense in that regard, or maybe somewhere in Iowa.

GD: I'm willing to put good money on the assumption that Missouri's next coach won't be named Ken Bone. But if he is, I sure hope it's this guy.

GD: Whether it's said publicly or not (and it never is), a player leaving is not always the player's choice. The new guy will be able to reshape his roster in a couple years if he chooses to do so. As for individual players, I never speculate on who will leave.

GD: Truthfully, I don't think very many kids fax their letters in anymore. I think most of it is done digitally. But considering I never use a fax machine any other day of the year, if even one kid per school does it, the answer to your question is yes.

GD: Yes, they can. And I think that's certainly a possibility depending on who the coach is and what he wants to do with the roster.

GD: It can be very good. Potentially even the best in the SEC. But let's go back 12 months. Everyone was asking the same question about the defense. And we saw what happened. Injuries happen. Not every player improves. Other teams adjust. The hope, certainly, is that the offense improves from what it did this year, but it's no guarantee. Also, I don't think Missouri's offense was anywhere near as good as the stats indicated. They ran a million plays. They piled up tons of yards and points against Eastern Michigan and Delaware State. They were really good against Tennessee, but still got beat by 26 and made quite a few mistakes. They were decent against Arkansas, mostly for a half. They were non-existent against LSU, Florida and Kentucky. So they need to be more consistent as well as improved.

GD: Good one. I've never spoken to him. He's never done an interview since taking the job.

GD: Not a clue. My guess would be if he isn't some sort of ambassador or administrator at Mizzou he'd collect his buyout and retire to wherever he wants to retire to.

GD: Not every offer is created equal. Some kids can commit whenever they want to. Some kids can only commit if another prospect is off the board (so, technically, do they really have an offer?) At this point in time, though, I don't know if there's anyone on the board who Missouri will simply wait on. If there is, I'd guess Young and Palmore are those guys. Everyone else, if they want to wait until Signing Day, may risk losing a spot if someone else wants to commit.