Freshman receivers look to build off breakout game
Chance Luper has been thinking about his first college touchdown for almost a year now. It was “supposed” to come on Oct. 10 last season, he said Wednesday, when Missouri hosted defending national champion LSU.
Head coach Eli Drinkwitz had drawn up a play specifically for Luper, and it worked perfectly, with Luper coming wide open over the middle of the field and running for a 69-yard gain. While the big play set up Missouri’s go-ahead touchdown, Luper kicked himself for getting tackled at the 10-yard line rather than finding the end zone himself.
“I try not to think about it, because it should have been my first touchdown,” Luper said Wednesday.
After Missouri’s win over Southeast Missouri on Saturday, Luper can stop imagining what it would have been like to taste the end zone. In the second quarter, Luper took a swing pass from quarterback Connor Bazelak, followed blocks from fellow wideouts Keke Chism and Tauskie Dove and raced 52 yards down the sidelines for a score. Afterward, he and his father, Missouri running back coach Curtis Luper, showed off a Kobe Bryant-inspired celebration they’ve been planning for a year now, with the younger Luper mimicking Bryant’s patented fadeaway jumper and his father contesting the shot.
“We’re big Kobe fans,” Chance Luper explained. “So we had a celebration in mind. We were supposed to do it (against) LSU, I was supposed to score that run, but I didn’t score. But we got a little Kobe celebration.”
Luper’s touchdown was part of a day of firsts for Missouri’s young receivers. Eight different wideouts caught passes in the game, and four freshmen set new career-highs in receiving yardage. Three scored the first touchdown of their college careers, with Boo Smith and JJ Hester also finding the end zone.
While Missouri put virtually every healthy player on the field against SEMO, giving snaps to 77 different players, the young receivers weren’t just out there to run out the clock in the second half. As Drinkwitz continues to re-make the wide receiver room, Saturday represented an important step: the chance for the young wideouts to get in-game chemistry with the first-team offense and show what they can do on game day. Senior slot receiver Barrett Banister called those game reps “priceless.”
“A coach once told me one game rep is as good as a thousand practice reps,” Banister said. “To be able to get out there and actually get your feet on the turf and be out there where there’s officials and everything’s live, it’s different. So I think it was really good for some of those guys that down the road we may count on, or it might be next week.”
Since taking over at Missouri two years ago, Drinkwitz has turned over the wide receiver room more quickly than any other position. Of the eight wideouts who have caught multiple passes so far this season, only two were on the roster when he arrived: Banister and Dove.
Saturday’s game represented a coming-out party for several of the players that are expected to headline the position for seasons to come — and possibly sooner. True freshman Dominic Lovett has seen his production increase across each of the first three games of his college career. The former four-star recruit out of East St. Louis didn’t catch a pass against Central Michigan, then caught four for 18 yards against Kentucky, then turned four catches into 79 yards and rushed once for eight yards against SEMO.
The youngest member of Missouri’s wide receiver room would have been forgiven for needing a redshirt season to get acclimated to college football before playing significant snaps. The Central Michigan game represented his first game action since 2019, as Illinois moved its high school football season to the spring last year and Lovett didn’t participate since he enrolled at Missouri in January. Lovett said the biggest challenge has simply been adjusting to a level of competition where just about everyone is as fast and strong as he is.
But while teammates say Lovett is still learning the nitty gritty details of playing the position in college, his growth since the start of spring practices has been noticeable.
“I think first impressions of (Lovett) whenever he got here was really just kind of an energetic kid, was happy to be here,” Banister said. “Loved the sport of football, but maybe lacked some details that you get from going from high school to college. So I think just over spring, summer and even every single day now, he’s just focused on details and just how can he improve that and make himself a better football player. Because the kid’s got all the intangibles, you know what I mean? He’s a really smart kid, too. And he’s getting better every day, and we’re really proud of him.”
Lovett embodies the primary attribute Drinkwitz has sought to infuse into the receiving corps: speed. Lovett was a big-play machine at East St. Louis. As a junior, he averaged 21.1 yards per catch on 73 receptions and scored 17 total touchdowns. He sees his role at Missouri as someone who can spread the field vertically and create explosive plays.
“My strength is I take the top off the defense,” Lovett said. “I’m kind of a speedster guy. I got a little bit of every attribute you can think of: speed, got hands, can jump. So when I go out there, I just play my role.”
Lovett isn’t the only new receiver who has demonstrated big-play ability. Ohio State transfer Mookie Cooper was limited by a foot injury during fall camp, but he, too, recorded a career high in yardage against SEMO. Cooper gained 70 total yards on five touches. Like Lovett, Cooper has continued to see his role expand as the season has progressed. In Week One, he only got the ball behind the line of scrimmage, but Saturday, he beat his defender on a deep post for a 46-yard catch.
Then there’s Hester. The 2019 signee has drawn consistent praise from Drinkwitz since arriving on campus, but until Saturday, he had yet to back it up with game day production. Hester was limited by an injury last season and during the first two weeks this year had played a few snaps with the starters but hadn’t recorded a catch. Against SEMO, his first college grab saw him gain 14 yards to move the chains on third down and 13. Later, he caught Tyler Macon’s first pass attempt and accelerated away from everyone for a touchdown.
Drinkwitz said after the game that the coaching staff had wanted to see Hester play with more confidence. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Hester said the touchdown “boosts my confidence a lot.”
“Really proud of the way JJ Hester looked today,” Drinkwitz said. “He took that slant route and exploded through there. He played with some confidence, which is what we really want to see out of him. So that was really good to see.”
The elder statesmen of Missouri’s wide receiver room (Chism, Dove and Banister) will almost certainly continue to be involved in the offense moving forward. But Saturday allowed for the team’s four freshman (Cooper, Hester, Luper and Lovett) to continue to build chemistry with Bazelak and also to prove, both to the coaching staffs and themselves, what they can bring to the Tiger offense.
The hope is that the performance can serve as a springboard, that the young wideouts can keep creating big plays as the competition level increases. Lovett, for one, is confident the group can continue to deliver.
“That was just a taste of what the offense can be if we keep going in that direction,” Lovett said, “which I think we will.”
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