But Satou's mom is a fan which makes it still cool.
Also Eripon liked AKB and S/mileage. So she was a fan of H!P to some degree at least.
Also Haruna was a huge Sayu fan and would follow her blog. I think before she even auditioned she had told her classmates at school that her dream was to join Morning Musume. When I read her blog post where she said this it completely changed my mind about Haruna.
As for the other girls Haruka, Mizuki and Sakura were eggs with Mizuki being a H!P wota. Riho was in the fashionable play which makes her joining morning musume cool since even if she didn't like them before the fashionable she probably grew a lot of respect for them during the play.
Zukki probably had the least connection to MoMusu but I liked her since she is the one girl from the 9th gen audition who had no background in dance or singing. So even though Zukki didn't know morning musume I don't think she auditioned in order to use morning musume as a stepping stone to being an idol. I think she just did it because her parents told her about it and she thought "why not?"