On Monday, new Missouri defensive coordinator Steve Wilks met with the media for the first time since being hired last week. Wilks, a longtime NFL assistant who spent 2018 as the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, spent last season out of coaching after he had been fired each of the past two seasons. He got to know Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz during Drinkwitz’s lone season as the head coach at Appalachian State, Wilks’ alma mater, and said he was drawn back to the college ranks for the first time since 2005 due to the fit he felt with the culture Drinkwitz has built at Missouri.
“What I've learned, particularly in my time in ‘18 at the Arizona Cardinals, it’s harder to install a culture than it is to install a defense,” Wilks said. “And you have to have the right chemistry, got to have the right people, coaches and players. And I've felt like (Drinkwitz) has done a great job in really trying to assemble that here with his staff, and then the ability to go out and not just draft guys, but go out and really recruit and bring the guys that fit your program, and that you know you're going to be able to nurture and groom and grow and develop. So that was the main reason for me.”
Wilks had just started watching film of Missouri as of Monday morning, but he did reveal that he plans to run a base 4-3 defense, which he said will really look more like a 4-2-5 due to so many college offenses running some variation of the spread. He also noted that his unit will be able to easily transition to an odd front based on the matchup. The one player he mentioned by name was redshirt sophomore defensive end Trajan Jeffcoat, who earned first-team all-SEC honors this past season after recording six sacks.
Wilks did not reveal whether he will coach a position in addition to his defensive coordinator duties, saying he would need to sit down with the defensive staff and finalize everyone’s role. Former defensive coordinator Ryan Walters also coached Missouri’s safeties, and Wilks has a long background coaching defensive backs. Wilks did say, however, that he is “chomping at the bit” to coach a position for the first time since 2016.
“I'm chomping at the bit to really get back and have a position,” Wilks said. “As I've talked about before, just looking at the years in Carolina and different places where I've been developing guys like Josh Norman, Captain Munnerlyn, etc. (In 2018), I was the head coach, overseeing everything, didn't have a position. In Cleveland, defensive coordinator. And of course last year, taking some time off. So I'm looking to get in and have a major impact and put my hands on these guys each and every day.”
One thing we do now know about Wilks’ role at Mizzou: his compensation. Shortly after Wilks spoke to the media Monday, PowerMizzou learned the terms of Wilks’ two-year contract. He will earn a base salary of $800,000 in 2021. He will be eligible to earn a $200,000 retention bonus on Feb. 15, 2022 and another $200,000 if he is still employed on July 15, 2022. For the 2022 season, his base salary will be $1 million, with another $200,000 paid to him if he is still employed on Dec. 15, 2022. In total, he will be eligible to make $2.4 million over the next two seasons. That represents a slight raise from Walters, who earned a base salary of $900,000.
Drinkwitz, who also spoke Monday, said he was “blown away” by the amount of interest expressed in the defensive coordinator opening, but said Wilks quickly emerged as his top choice. Ultimately, Wilks was the only candidate who Drinkwitz flew out of town to interview. Wilks quipped that he hopes Drinkwitz is as good at selling recruits on the program as he was at convincing Wilks to come to Missouri.
“Blew me away, honestly, how much interest and phone calls, coordinators were wanting this opportunity,” Drinkwitz said. “Did my due diligence and interviewed several people, a lot of which aren't known, and that's on purpose. Ultimately, really only had one recruiting trip and that was to go land coach Wilks. That was really my singular focus when I left here to go interview people was to go convince coach Wilks to join the Tigers.”
Defensive line hire all but finalized
It didn’t take long after hiring Wilks for Drinkwitz to fill the final void on his coaching staff. On Sunday, PowerMizzou reported that Missouri would hire Jethro Franklin to replace Brick Haley, with whom the team parted ways on Jan. 19. Monday, Drinkwitz said Monday that Missouri is “in the process of hiring” Franklin and he expected the hire to be finalized Tuesday.
“Just felt like an opportunity for us to have a fresh start,” Drinkwitz said. “Respect coach Haley and the job he's done here for the previous four years and wish him nothing but the best, but it was an opportunity for us to start new and go in a different direction and felt like I needed to do that.”
Like Wilks, Franklin will arrive in Columbia with extensive experience at both the college and NFL levels. He has 16 seasons of combined experience coaching the defensive line in college at Fresno State, UCLA, USC, Temple and Miami. He’s also made five NFL stops, most recently with the Seattle Seahawks, where he coached the defensive line in 2018 and 2019.
Wilks said he’s known Franklin since 2005, when Wilks coached at Washington and Franklin at USC. He complimented his ability to teach fundamentals and noted that Franklin coached former Missouri star defensive end Aldon Smith during his stint with the Oakland Raiders.
“I've known Jethro for a while,” Wilks said. “Tremendous leader, ... great communicator, great teacher. He’s developed players over the years. One that I just mentioned, Aldon Smith, he coached him. So he is a guy that I feel like is going to bring a lot to the program just from the mere fact of just being a fundamentalist.”
Hoops prepares to face star freshman
Across much of the college basketball landscape, teams reliant on freshmen to immediately carry the scoring load have struggled. The three highest-ranked schools in the 2020 Rivals team rankings, Kentucky, Duke and North Carolina, are a combined 12-9 in conference play, far below their usual lofty standards. If the NCAA Tournament started today, all three teams might be on the outside looking in.
The fourth team in those rankings is Auburn. The Tigers probably had the worst start to the season out of all the above schools, self-imposing a postseason ban and then starting SEC play 0-4. But once Auburn got the crown jewel of its recruiting class, freshman Sharife Cooper, cleared by the NCAA and on the court, he has looked like the kind of transformational talent a five-star prospect is supposed to represent.
Missouri’s task Tuesday will be to slow down Cooper, something no one else has been able to do in his five college games so far. Since Cooper gained eligibility, Auburn has gone 2-3 and averaged 87 points per game, compared to 70.7 in their first three SEC contests. Cooper has scored at least 25 points in three of those games and logged two double-doubles with points and assists. Cooper is averaging 21.2 points and 9.0 assists per game so far. He’s impacted Auburn so much, Missouri assistant coach Chris Hollender told reporters Monday, that in preparing the scouting report for Auburn, Hollender hardly even looked at the team’s first 11 games of the season.
“I think they played the majority of their games before him without a point guard,” Hollender said. “... Now that Shairfe has come and played, they’re playing a lot better than they did because he fills that void for them. But no, I really haven’t gone back and watched any of the film beforehand. He controls a lot of the game, he has the ball in his hands a lot, and everything starts, and a lot of the time, 70 percent of the time, it may finish with him. ... Totally different looking team with him on the floor.”
Cooper has done most of his damage so far as a driver, either scoring or finding an open teammate once he’s penetrated inside the perimeter of a defense. Hollender said Missouri is preparing to face 60 or so ball screens for Cooper during the course of the game — a stark contrast from Tennessee, which rarely attacked off ball screens.
Once Cooper drives off those screens, he’s adept at drawing contact, averaging nine attempts from the line per game. Avoiding cheap fouls will be critical for Missouri, particularly point guard Dru Smith, who has been foul-prone at times and figures to defend Cooper for most of the game
“He gets to the foul line an awful lot because he really does try to absorb a lot of contact on his penetration, does a great job of finding little gaps and little seams,” Hollender said. “Not afraid to get hit, not afraid to continue his drives downhill and puts a lot of pressure on your defense because he’s really never done when he’s got the basketball.”
With Cooper drawing so much attention from opposing defenses, Auburn’s other offensive weapons have improved. Sophomore Allen Flanigan, who averaged 3.2 points per game in a smaller role last season, is averaging 14.4 this year. He scored a career-high 24 on Saturday against South Carolina. Hollender and Missouri’s players raved about Cooper’s ability to get his teammates involved.
“They got a lot of guys that shoot threes,” Hollender said. “They got a lot of guys that get open threes because Cooper puts them in position to get open threes because of his ability to get downhill and get to the paint.”
Tigers not worried about letdown
Perhaps just as much of a challenge as stopping Cooper will be the situation for Missouri on Tuesday. With just two days off between games and a 7:30 p.m. tipoff on Saturday, the team didn’t travel back to Columbia, instead spending Saturday night in Knoxville and traveling to Auburn on Sunday. Plus, in addition to the tiring travel itinerary, there’s a natural tendency for a letdown following a road win over a top-10 team — Missouri’s first such win since 2012.
But Hollender isn’t worried about his team’s energy level. He sees a difference in this year’s version of the Tigers than the past couple, a more businesslike approach that he attributes to the team’s maturity and experience.
“Our guys are really good at really doing the next right thing,” Hollender said. “We had a long travel day on Sunday and went into the gym on Sunday night and their energy and enthusiasm was awesome, and so our guys have really been resilient, they’ve really done a good job of just coming in every day, being businesslike, win or lose, no matter what’s going on around us. They’ve really had blinders on, to be quite honest with you.”
Sophomore forward Kobe Brown echoed the sentiment, saying Missouri has bigger goals than simply beating ranked teams during the regular season. He feels the team hasn’t let Saturday’s triumph derail their focus.
“I mean, after that game, the next day, no one really talked about it anymore,” Brown said of the win over Tennessee. “We were just focused on Auburn, trying to figure out what they’re doing, what they like to do and all stuff like that. So it’s just, we win the game and move forward and try to keep winning in the future.”
Dru Smith named SEC Player of the Week
A few different Missouri players probably could have been in the running for the conference’s weekly top player award, but senior guard Dru Smith ultimately earned the honor. Smith averaged 17 points, 4 rebounds and 2.5 assists in Missouri’s wins over Tennessee and South Carolina.
It’s the second time this season he has been named the SEC Player of the week and the third time a Missouri player has won the award, as fellow guard Mark Smith earned the honor following the first week of December.
