Friday Morning Update

Spanning the globe on a Friday morning …

Here’s the story from Andy Staples of SI.com on the Ole Miss recruiting class. Staples was in the IPF meeting room with Hugh Freeze and his staff on Signing Day.

It does a great job of laying out Freeze’s reasons for the success of this recruiting class. It’s unlikely to win over everyone to Freeze’s way of thinking, however. This is college football. Everyone doesn’t want you to succeed.

FoxSportsNext, a division of Scout, honored Chris Kiffin as its national recruiter of the year on Thursday. Also there began to be Twitter conversation about the Ole Miss coaching staff’s use of social media for recruiting. Some favor increased regulation of social media by the NCAA with regard to recruiting.

That figure will seem absurd to some, but it’s within the rules. It should become a blue print for recruiting and probably will.

When you are a middling SEC program trying to improve you have to recruit outside of the box. That means offering second chances to players who, for whatever reason, didn’t work out at their first stop. It also means an aggressive approach with highly rated prospects. Ed Orgeron — remember Joe McKnight? — and other Ole Miss coaches have done this, but none of them had the natural connections — a brother, a good friend — that Freeze had.

The question on the minds of Ole Miss fans is exactly how much does this class help the Rebels rise above middling and how soon? Like, could it happen next year?

This Bleacher Report column was written before Elijah Daniel flipped but asks that same question. How does this class impact next year?

There are obviously big gets in this class, and it stands to reason that Robert Nkemdiche and Laquon Treadwell can help right away. But can Laremy Tunsil? It’s not as easy for an offensive lineman to break in and play early, although plenty of players with special talent have done that.

Tunsil is a tackle, and the Rebels have two returning senior starters in Emmanuel McCray and Pierce Burton. Can one of those three play guard?

That might be what it takes to get the best players on the field. You figure Tunsil will be worked in and will get some snaps. The only starting vacancy is at right guard, and Patrick Junen is expected to step in as the starter then.

It’s an interesting question for OL coach Matt Luke.

In non-recruiting news …

The Ole Miss basketball team plays at No. 21 Missouri Saturday at noon on CBS. The Tigers lost at Texas A&M last night on a shot in the final 12 seconds. Missouri hasn’t lost at home but hasn’t won an SEC road game.