COLUMBIA, MO. • When Barry Odom put together his first full recruiting class as Missouri’s head coach, he nabbed only one in-state prospect — an academic casualty who won’t be on campus until January at the earliest — and instead went far and wide to collect talent.
While Mizzou has always supplemented in-state recruiting efforts with players from other parts of the country, Odom’s staff racked up frequent flyer miles with its 2017 class, landing a handful of prospects from states rarely visited by MU coaches: North Carolina, Michigan and Alabama to name a few.
Mizzou’s freshman class includes scholarship players from more than a quarter of the union, 13 states overall — 15 if you count a few more junior-college imports.