ANDERSON RETURNS TO ARKANSAS

MIKE ANDERSON'S MISSOURI LEGACY    

    After five seasons at the University of Missouri, head basketball coach Mike Anderson on Wednesday submitted his resignation to take over at Arkansas, where he served 17 years as a Nolan Richardson assistant.

    Anderson's success as head man at UAB and Missouri led to overtures from Georgia and Oregon after his third and fourth seasons at MU. He eschewed MU's reported $2 million yearly salary and contract extension to return to Arkansas for a 7-year deal worth about $2.2 million a year.

     Missouri Athletic Director Mike Alden immediately began to search for a "name" replacement; and today the name mentioned most often is Matt Painter who in five years at his alma mater, Purdue, took the Boilermakers to two Sweet 16's while racking up 129 victories. With Cuonzo Martin, another Purdue grad, leaving Missouri State for Tennessee, the Painter possibility seems suspect, as Martin would have been a likely candidate at Purdue if Painter is seriously considering the Missouri job.

    Anderson's departure contradicted his vow just weeks ago to stay at Missouri for the long haul. The reaction of fans and media has been vitriolic, reflecting a sense of betrayal and manipulation from a coach whose Tiger teams averaged only a fifth place Big XII finish during his tenure at Mizzou.

    Despite the messy exit, Anderson revitalized a program left in shambles at the end of Quin Snyder's 6-year stint. Hired in March, 2006, Anderson inherited a team of prima donna troublemakers and brought discipline and an up-tempo style that restored a measure of respectability for Missouri basketball. It took most of his first two years to weed out the malcontents from the Snyder era and to find players willing to sacrifice personal agendas that meshed with his philosophy of "40 minutes of hell." MU went 34-28 (13-19 Big XII) and failed to make post-season play those first two years.

    In the 2008-09 season, with a grab bag of Snyder's recruits mixed with a few of his own signees, Anderson's Tigers finished 31-7 (setting a school record for victories), went 12-4 in conference, won the Big XII tournament, earned a #3 seed in the NCAA tournament, fired up long-suffering Mizzou fans and captured the imagination of the college hoops world before losing to Connecticut in the West Regional Finals.

    Last year, Missouri finished 23-11 (10-6 Big XII), lost its first round Big XII tournament game but managed a return to the Big Dance as a 10^th seed, beating Clemson in the first round before bowing out to West Virginia. The Tigers did beat Illinois after 10 consecutive losses.

    This year Mizzou was ranked as high as 8^th in early polls but fell out of the Top 25 after its late season slump. The Tigers managed only one conference road win, finished 23-11 again (but only 8-8 in conference play), again lost a first round game in the conference tournament, slipped into the NCAA field as an 11 seed but lost to Cincinnati in the first round.

    Anderson's critics point to a number of factors that contributed to Missouri's mild regression over the past two years: failure to recruit the best high school prospects from inside the state's borders (see Alec Burks out of Grandview who went to Colorado); failure to bolster a thin and undersized corps of big men; inability to field teams capable of more than a few upsets against the Big XII's traditional powers. The recruiting problems are inherent to a program not perceived as "elite" in a national sense.

Nevertheless when mid-major teams such as Butler and Gonzaga consistently find ways to compete against top-tier programs, Mizzou's frustrated fans can't fathom why the state's flagship basketball program has never made it to the Final Four, let alone won a national title.    

    As is the wont of all coaches, Mike Anderson has moved on. He teased the Tiger faithful with a meteoric flash in his third year but couldn't duplicate that success the past two seasons. Although his time here didn't meet with total success, Anderson did put MU basketball back on solid footing. No Missouri team won more games in a three-year span than his last three. His overall record in five years was 111-47, including a Big XII tournament trophy and a 5-3 record in three consecutive NCAA tournaments.

    Alden's next hire will inherit a veteran team of Anderson's recruits, will benefit from first-class facilities and will be paid big bucks to take Missouri basketball to a higher level of competiveness.