Who did the Missouri Tigers get in the 2015 recruiting class?
There would have been a lot of chirping crickets had anyone suggested that the Missouri Tigers would already have two appearances in the Southeastern Conference championship game after just three years in the vaunted league.
But that’s exactly what Gary Pinkel has done with Mizzou. The Tigers struggled in their first SEC campaign in 2012, but have bounced back with back-to-back SEC East titles.
After a crushing loss to then-No. 1 Alabama in the SEC title game, Mizzou bounced back to beat Minnesota in the Citrus Bowl, 33-17.
The Tigers are 23-5 over the last two seasons.
And here’s the thing: Pinkel is doing it without a lot of blue-chippers walking into his training room. Missouri is projected to have another recruiting class outside of the top 25—the Tigers’ last top-25 class was in 2010—but Pinkel has a history of coaching his guys up and delivering the results on Saturdays.
The Tigers are projected to pick up a handful of four-star recruits on Wednesday during National Signing Day and with 113 wins in 14 seasons in Columbia, Pinkel has shown himself to be up to the challenge of putting a solid, competitive squad on the field—even in the rugged SEC, a place where many observers believed the program would slide toward irrelevance and stay there.
Surprise!
So who did the Tigers land in its efforts to continue to rule the SEC East? Follow along with us throughout the day Wednesday to see if Pinkel has mined some more diamonds in the rough in 2015:
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