Saturday's SEC showdown between 22nd-ranked Missouri (Coaches Poll) and Oklahoma, two teams that faced each other on plenty of occasions as members of the Big 12 and all of its previous iterations, represents a homecoming of sorts for several players who began their college careers on the opposite sideline.
Wide receiver J.J. Hester was the highest-rated recruit in Missouri's 2020 class, a four-star prospect from Tulsa in the Sooner State. The native Oklahoman was the No. 3 recruit in the state of Oklahoma, according to ESPN, and one who got away in the Lincoln Riley coaching era at OU. Theo Wease was a sophomore wide receiver at Oklahoma during Hester's freshman season at Mizzou in 2020.
In addition to Wease, who was a five-star prospect out of Allen, Texas, the same hometown that produced OU Heisman winner Kyler Murray, the 2020 Sooner team featured an elite wide receiver group that included such names as freshman Marvin Mims, sophomores Jaden Haselwood, Trejan Bridges and Drake Stoops, and junior Charleston Rambo. The depth of that group was probably a leading reason why the Sooners did not recruit Hester that hard.
Another compelling factor, however, in how Hester wound up committing to Missouri was the influence of former Booker T. Washington alum Garrick McGee. If that name sounds familiar to Sooner fans, it's because McGee played quarterback at Oklahoma from 1994-95 and was wide receivers coach at Missouri at the time Hester committed. By the time Hester arrived on campus in Columbia, however, McGee was gone with the head coaching change to Eli Drinkwitz prior to the 2020 season.
Long time, no see 👋#OUDNA | @OKTurnpike pic.twitter.com/BWGDtKS1e2
— Oklahoma Football (@OU_Football) November 8, 2024
And as fate would have it in the longtime history of this football series, Drinkwitz, who is in his fifth season as head coach at Missouri, was born in Norman, Oklahoma.
After redshirting his freshman year at Missouri in 2020, Hester appeared in 13 games the following season, finishing with 15 catches for 255 yards, two touchdowns and an average of 17.0 yards per reception. Following the 2021 season, Hester turned in his Tiger uniform and transferred to Oklahoma. Hester and Wease were teammates at Oklahoma during the 2022 season, but at the end of that season Wease was on his way out of Norman and headed to Columbia, Missouri, to play for the Tigers.
Because of injuries that seriously limited his playing time the first two seasons, 2024 has been Hester's most productive in the three his has been at OU. Hester did not catch a pass in the Sooners' first four games this season, but he has 13 receptions for 265 yards in his last five games, including a record-setting 90-yard touchdown pass last week in the win over Maine, and is OU's second-leading receiver during that span.
Hester was asked earlier this week his feelings about returning to play at Missouri this weekend. "It definitely will be some nostalgia for sure just going back to where I started at," he told Ryan Aber, who covers the Sooners for The Oklahoman. "I've gotten a lot of questions about it and stuff, but I'm going to treat it like any other game.
"After the game, I'll talk to some guys. Before, I'll probably be a little more locked in and all that," he said.
In three full seasons at Oklahoma (he only played in two games in 2021 because of a foot injury), Wease caught 64 passes for 1,044 yards and 10 touchdowns in 37 games. He has already surpassed that in just two seasons at Missouri with 86 catches for 1,164 receiving yards with three games still remaining in the regular season. Saturday will be Wease's 22nd game for Mizzou.
A couple of other crossover connections that exist between these two rosters are Missouri standout wide receiver Luther Burden III and offensive tackle Cayden Green.
Burden was rated by ESPN as the No. 1 wide receiver in the 2022 recruiting class and the No. 8 player overall. He originally committed to Oklahoma, but after Lincoln Riley departed Norman to become head coach at USC, the East St. Louis prospect decommitted and turned his allegiance to Missouri.
The Sooners will be wise to know where Mizzou jersey No. 3 is on the field on Saturday. The former OU commit leads the Tigers with 40 catches this season for 450 yards and four touchdowns. For his career, the junior wide receiver has 211 receptions for close to 2,500 yards and 23 touchdowns.
Green committed to the Sooners, his boyhood dream team, in OU's 2023 class, as a four-star prospect who was born in Tulsa and lived the first five years of his life in Oklahoma before his family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, when he was five. Although he no longer was a resident of the Sooner State, Green still watched and rooted for the Sooners at his home in Kansas City.
Green officially became an Oklahoma Sooner for the 2023 season. He played in 11 games and started five at left guard on the offensive line. At season's end, however, the 6-foot, 5-inch, 320-pound interior offensive lineman informed his parents that he would be transferring, reportedly because of dissatisfaction over NIL negotiations with OU, according to an article in the Missouri Columbian. Green was unhappy and so was the Sooner fan base over losing such a talented young player on the offensive line. As it turned out, Oklahoma's loss was Missouri's gain via the transfer portal.
Without question, though, the most notable crossover between the two schools clearly has gone in Oklahoma's favor. In 1998 Joe Castiglione left the University of Missouri, where he had served for five years as that school's athletic director, to assume the same position at the University of Oklahoma. Twenty-six years later, Castiglione is recognized as one of the best , if not the best, administrators in all of college sports.