The offseason buzz around Missouri has been all about the incoming recruits. As the Tigers open fall camp on Friday morning, few individuals have generated more of that buzz than freshman receivers Dominic Lovett, an East St. Louis High School product, and Mookie Cooper, a prep star in St. Louis who is transferring in from Ohio State.
The hype is certainly understandable. Both were four-star prospects out of high school with speed to burn and endless potential. But before either of the newcomers finds his way into the starting lineup for the Tigers, they’ll have to leapfrog a trio of wideouts who have made a career out of being prematurely dismissed by pretty much everyone.
“We play as underdogs,” redshirt senior Barrett Banister said. “Not a lot of people wanted us.”
Banister came to Missouri as a walk-on out of Fayetteville (AR) High School. He was the lesser-known teammate of quarterback Taylor Powell, who earned a scholarship from the Tigers, but wasn’t really all that well-known himself.
“Not a whole lot of people expected very much from me,” Banister said the day before opening his fifth fall camp at Mizzou.
In that way, he’s got plenty of company in the wide receivers room in Columbia. The year after Banister redshirted on the Tigers’ scout team, Tauskie Dove signed with the Tigers in June…four months after the country’s most coveted recruits had inked their National Letters of Intent. Dove went into his senior season at Denton Ryan (TX) with somewhere around ten scholarship offers. By the time he was ready to focus on recruiting after the season, the spots were all gone. It looked like Dove was going to head to Tyler Junior College before Joe Jon Finley, Derek Dooley and A.J. Ofodile extended an invitation for an official visit and, shortly thereafter, a scholarship offer.
Dove redshirted in 2018. He caught two passes in 2019. Barry Odom was fired and Eli Drinkwitz was hired. He immediately went to work remaking Missouri’s receiving corps. That included the addition of Keke Chism, a 6-foot-5, 214-pound graduate transfer from Division II Angelo State. Chism was more accomplished statistically than Banister or Dove. His 2,221 career yards are sixth on Angelo State’s all-time list. But it was Angelo State. Division One schools weren’t really beating down his door.
“People count us out already,” Chism said. “We have that chip on our shoulder. We know that we have a lot to prove and we’re hungry.”
They’ve been leftovers their entire college careers. Dove was the only one with a Missouri offer out of high school and even that was a last-minute heave because the Tigers had an open spot. Having to earn everything they get is the only way this trio of Tigers has ever known to do it.
The 2020 season was perhaps the strangest in college football history. Games were moving by the day. Very few people were able to attend games. It was a week-to-week bingo card whether a given team would be able to put enough players in uniform to make protocols and play on Saturday.
But it did something for a lot of players: It provided an opportunity. The best ability in 2020 was availability. If you were in uniform, you were probably going to get a shot.
Chism was a starter when the Tigers broke camp. He had two catches for 12 yards in a season-opening loss to Alabama and then raised some eyebrows with an off-handed post-game comment about not being able to throw the ball to himself. Through four games, he had four catches for 64 yards. Chism still insists the transition to Division One football didn’t hold him back at the beginning of the year, but something appeared to click midway through the season. In the Tigers’ final six games, he had 31 catches for 394 yards and a touchdown. He ended up as Missouri’s leading receiver and caught at least five balls in five of the team’s final six games. He briefly considered the NFL, but in the end took advantage of the extra year of eligibility the NCAA granted every player and will play his sixth season of college football for Missouri in 2021.
“I’ve got a lot to prove this year and I lot I’m going to prove this year, a lot of goals ahead of me that I feel pretty confident that I know I’m going to achieve,” he said on Thursday. “It’s going to be a huge year for me and a huge year for this team.”
Tauskie Dove looked like he might be ready for a breakout at the end of the 2019 season. He had finally earned a little bit of playing time. In the season finale against Arkansas, he made an acrobatic 37-yard catch in a win over the Razorbacks. Sure, it was just one play, but in a receiving corps starving for someone to break through, it gave Tiger fans hope.
The next day, Odom was fired and soon replaced by Drinkwitz.
“It wasn’t a bad thing at all,” Dove said. “I just stayed in a neutral position. I didn’t go left or right. When the new staff came in, I saw how they do things so I made a little change.”
Dove caught just one pass as Missouri lost its first two games. But then in a season-changing upset of LSU, the redshirt sophomore hauled in six passes for 83 yards and a touchdown. They weren’t just career-highs; the numbers exceeded his totals in the previous year and two games. He would go on to catch 30 passes (tied for second on the team) and two touchdowns (tied for first). He was the player Mizzou’s contingent at SEC Media Days constantly brought up as being perhaps the most improved on the roster.
“He’s like a throwback 1980s football player who brings his lunchpail to work every day,” receivers coach Bush Hamdan said of Dove. “He doesn’t get lost in the social media part of it, he doesn’t get lost in the new age stuff. He’s a guy, he goes to work, he certainly got faster, got stronger this offseason and we’re excited about him.”
Can you even be an SEC wide receiver if you aren't a diva?
"I don’t know, man," Hamdan says with a laugh. "Every now and again you get a guy who’s sort of got like a fullback mentality in the room and he doesn’t say much but we certainly rely on him to be that certain guy every day."
Dove will enter fall camp as a starter. And he will remember what got him here.
“I used to not play at all,” he said. “I used to be on the sidelines, be on the scout team. I use that as motivation. I continue and I have the same work ethic. That’s what keeps me going.”
Of the trio of Mizzou’s proven receivers, Banister may be the most unlikely. Dove was a scholarship player. Chism was an all-conference player in college, even if it was at the D2 level. Banister didn’t have a single FBS offer out of high school and didn’t see the field his first year in Columbia.
In 2018, he caught eight passes for 88 yards as a redshirt freshman, including a 12-yarder on third and nine that kept a scoring drive alive in Missouri’s upset win at Florida.
“Catching eight passes my redshirt freshman year was a dream to me,” he said. “That was it.”
Except it wasn’t. Not even close. Banister earned a scholarship from Odom following that season. He caught 27 passes for 246 yards and a touchdown in 2019 and then 27 more for 252 yards in 2020. Along the way, he developed a reputation as Missouri’s most dependable receiver. He might not break a lot of long plays, but he almost never made a mistake.
“I enjoyed everything that came my way and I really try to not take it for granted,” he said. “I didn’t really ever think about stopping. This is what I enjoy doing. This is why I came to college. Obviously when coach Odom put enough trust in me to put money behind it, that was like, wow, thank you. Now I’m really not stopping. I don’t think that ever crossed my mind.”
It would be easy for Banister to think he's made it. He's already caught 62 passes--about 62 more than anyone ever would have expected him to catch--and earned a full-ride for his final three years at Mizzou. It would be easy for him to have changed.
"I think that’s the biggest thing is to try and have nothing change," Banister said. "Not a whole lot of people expected very much from me and I think having that chip on my shoulder is one of my biggest advantages. A lot of people don’t know what it’s like to come from a walk on and having to really come from the bottom up."
Banister’s spot in the starting lineup might be the most in peril entering camp. He’s a slot receiver and so is Cooper, who has been the talk of the town since spring football.
“Mookie and Domo (Lovett), they bring a lot of playmaking ability,” Banister said. “They’re fast, they’re smart and the best thing I’ve seen out of them this offseason, they are there to learn. They want to learn. They’re not stubborn, they’re not arrogant. They soak up everything they can from the older guys. I think that’s going to pay dividends for them this fall. I think they’re incredible players.”
They’re going to play. But so is Banister. There’s no doubt about that. Not everyone can be a star. But everyone can find a role to play. Banister has found his. Dove and Chism have too.
“It means something to us that this school put trust in us, this school put faith in us and we’re going to go out and play with everything we’ve got to try and get the job done,” Banister said. “I think that’s part of who we are. It’s part of our DNA.”
They’re now all an integral part of Missouri’s offense, led by Connor Bazelak, who was the SEC’s Offensive Freshman of the Year after the 2020 season. The guy throwing the passes has a deep admiration for the three players that caught 92 of his 218 completions a year ago.
“Barrett walked on, he’s got a chip on his shoulder,” Bazelak said. “Nobody gave him a chance to be a scholarship guy and he came here worked his butt off and got a scholarship. Kind of the same deal with Keke. He’s working trying to prove people wrong and show what they missed out on (with) him so he’s been working hard. Same thing with Tauskie. I think they’re all great guys, they’re all great leaders, they’re all set for a big year.
The trio that no one thought was good enough is suddenly right in the middle of a Missouri team that surprised plenty of people last year and has its sights set high in 2021. And they’re not shying away from the spotlight.
“I’ve got a plan,” Dove said. “Me and Connor, we’re going to put up some numbers this season.”
“We had a decent year, but we know we’re capable of more,” Chism said. “This offseason, we were trying to do everything we can to find an advantage and close that gap. Trying to do everything we can and get to the top of the SEC East.”
If the Tigers can get there, Missouri’s once overlooked receivers are going to have played a large part.
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