Mizzou faces Florida team with new coach, Lock’s recent success, Odom on recruiting

The Southeastern Conference’s football coaches convene in Destin, Fla., each spring for conference meetings, and the most recent gathering included assigned seats. Missouri coach Barry Odom sat next to a man who he was preparing to see this weekend: Florida’s Jim McElwain.

McElwain won’t be with the Gators when their game against Mizzou kicks off at 11 a.m. Saturday in Memorial Stadium. Florida announced Sunday that the coach and school had agreed to “part ways.” The Gators have lost three straight, all against conference opponents. The most recent defeat was the most embarrassing: Georgia beat Florida 42-7.

“I hate it for him on a personal level,” Odom said of McElwain’s ouster. “He’s a good dude.”

McElwain and Florida had an increasingly toxic relationship that grew worse when he said during a news conference last week that he had received death threats but then did not substantiate the claim. He went 22-12 at Florida and won SEC East division titles each of his first two seasons.

A year ago, Missouri played at LSU the same week the school fired coach Les Miles, and the present LSU coach, Ed Orgeron, served as an interim replacement before LSU offered him the job moving forward.

“For us, any comparison to when it’s happened before won’t really relate to this current situation for me because we’re two different teams,” Odom said. “It’s a different season, a different group of guys. I think if you look at offensively and defensively what they’ve done up to this point, I would imagine they (Florida) would stay pretty true to that. Maybe some tweaks here and there, but there always are going into a game.”

Florida’s interim coach, Randy Shannon, said he will not serve as defensive coordinator and the Gators’ defensive line coach will instead. Shannon, the former coach at the University of Miami, served as defensive coordinator for two-plus seasons under McElwain.

The Gators rank sixth in the SEC in total defense. For the season, they have given up an average of 360.3 yards per game.

Mizzou QB’s experience paying off

Barry Odom believes his quarterback, Drew Lock, is playing the best football of his career.

Missouri’s three wins have all come against inept passing defenses, which has inflated Lock’s statistics, but the junior from Lee’s Summit also played well against Mizzou’s two most recent conference opponents, Georgia and Kentucky. In Mizzou’s four most recent games, Lock has thrown 18 touchdowns and just two interceptions and averaged 15.9 yards per attempt.

Odom and offensive coordinator Josh Heupel didn’t mention a specific concept that Lock has mastered in recent weeks. The coaches think all of Lock’s experience — he has now started 28 games since taking over for Maty Mauk in 2015 — has started to bear better results.

“The light bulb is coming on for him, and it’s coming on when it typically does with the young quarterbacks I’ve coached,” Heupel said.

Heupel, who finished as a runner-up for the Heisman Trophy when he played quarterback at Oklahoma, said Lock is more talented than he ever was. But Heupel dismissed a question about the possibility of Lock leaving early for the NFL and said “there’s plenty of ways for him to continue to improve.”

No more October trips to the Northeast?

After winning two straight games against Idaho and Connecticut, Missouri finishes its season with four conference opponents: Florida, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Arkansas.

Odom said he would prefer to have his team’s scheduled frontloaded with nonconference games. But he acknowledged that when considering fans’ experience at blowout nonconference games, the topic of what an ideal schedule is could be “a debate for hours.”

“I couldn’t believe the weather,” Odom said of the game in Connecticut. “I thought it was going to be a lot worse than it was. Anyway, that’s the way it was. Poor, pitiful me, right?”

Odom not worried about recruiting

Missouri lost its third and final class of 2018 commitment from Alabama last week, when quarterback James Foster backed out on his pledge to the Tigers. The exodus of Alabama prospects from the Tigers’ 2018 class, which ranks 13th in the SEC and 70th nationally, according to 247 Sports’ composite rankings, has to do at least in part with Missouri’s 3-5 record this season.

The NCAA now allows recruits to sign their National Letters of Intent as early as Dec. 20 should they wish to end their recruitment before National Signing Day in February.

On Monday, Odom expressed little worry about the Tigers’ recent recruiting developments.

“There’s a lot of time between now and the first signing date, and there’s a whole lot of time between now and the second signing date,” Odom said. “There’s going to be a lot of things that happen, some positive and some negative.”

The Tigers’ depth chart this week — which does not include sophomore running back Damarea Crockett, who is out because of a shoulder injury — lists just five seniors, and Odom believes that causes a mixed reaction from recruits. Some see it as a sign Missouri’s coaches will use young players, and others might worry that there will be players in front of them for multiple seasons.

“We’re going to recruit extremely hard the guys that we think can fit what we’re doing structurally, but more importantly what we’re doing culturally,” Odom said. “We’ll finish it up with hitting the right fit for the right position. I’d like to be all signed, sealed, delivered, have it over with. But things have changed.”

This story was originally published October 30, 2017 at 3:59 PM with the headline "Mizzou faces Florida team with new coach, Lock’s recent success, Odom on recruiting."