From 1975 to 1999, Missouri won 506 games and lost just 261. That’s an average record of 21-11 over 24 seasons. The Tigers finished in the top 25 of the rankings ten times (including four top-ten rankings) and made the NCAA Tournament 16 times (two out of every three years). They won eight regular season conference championships and finished in the bottom half of the league standings just four times.
At the end of the 1998-99 season, Norm Stewart was done as Missouri’s head coach. Over the last four days, PowerMizzou.com has looked at how Missouri basketball went from that lofty perch to its current status. We broke this series down by coaching tenures. Each section examines the program and key events under the four coaches since Stewart.
Monday--Part I: The Quin Snyder Years
Tuesday--Part II: The Mike Anderson Years
Wednesday--Part III: The Frank Haith Years
On April 18, 2014, Frank Haith was named the head coach at Tulsa. For the fourth time in his 15 years as Mizzou’s Director of Athletics, Mike Alden was charged with finding a basketball coach.
By April 21st, a report from Andy Katz had named Central Missouri head coach Kim Anderson--fresh off a Division II national championship--as a “strong candidate for the vacancy.” Many, including this reporter, dismissed that report as somewhere between unlikely and impossible. Anderson had been a long-time Missouri assistant. He had been (loosely) considered as a replacement for Norm Stewart 15 years prior. Relations between Alden and the Stewart camp had never been all that warm. Why, after passing on three previous chances, would Alden hire Anderson now?
Seven days later, he did just that. The path to Anderson was not quite that direct. He was indeed, obviously, a strong candidate for the opening. But he wasn’t the only one, or even the top one. That was Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall.
How close Marshall came to taking the job is a question that is still unanswered. Some say it was strongly considered, others say it was never a real possibility. What has been told to PowerMizzou.com by multiple sources in the last two years is that Mizzou met with Marshall. The Tigers went to great lengths to hide that fact--sending an empty decoy plane into the air while Alden and associates flew out of a smaller airport in Mexico, Mo. to meet Marshall in Wichita. The courtship was unsuccessful and the Tigers would hire Anderson soon after.
Various sources have told PowerMizzou.com that a variety of coaches expressed interest in the job--from Brad Underwood to Chris Mack to Kevin Stallings to Frank Martin--but Missouri’s search appeared to go from Marshall to Anderson in relatively short order (some have said then-Louisiana Tech coach Mike White was offered the job in between, but that is information PowerMizzou.com has never been able to verify with certainty).
On April 28, Anderson was introduced as the head coach at Missouri, 15 years after initially hoping to land the job.
“I thought at that time, I think the University was probably looking to go in another direction," Anderson said. "I wouldn't have hired me either in 1999. I wasn't ready. I don't think I was prepared to run a basketball program. I think there were just a lot of things I still needed to learn.
"Now I'm sitting here as the coach at the University of Missouri. I don't think I'll ever be able to decribe to you guys how special that feeling is."
The honeymoon wouldn’t last long.
Upon taking the job, Anderson announced soon after that Haith’s lead assistant, Tim Fuller, would stay on. This was viewed as a key to keeping together a recruiting class that was led by top 75 signees Namon Wright and Jakeenan Gant. Wright asked out of his National Letter of Intent, but ended up re-signing with Mizzou. Gant never asked for a release.
Anderson brought Brad Loos with him from UCM and added Huntington Prep head coach Rob Fulford to his staff. Fulford brought Montaque Gill-Caesar along with him, giving the Tigers three of the top 75 players in the country in Anderson’s first class. He added late signees D’Angelo Allen and Tramaine Isabell as well.
But the first game of Anderson’s career was a 69-61 loss to UMKC. It didn’t get much better from there. The Tigers went just 9-23 in Anderson’s first season, including a 3-16 record against SEC competition. After just a year, there was already talk among fans that the new coach was in over his head at the Division One level.
The on-court product was matched in turmoil by the off-court issues. Gant was suspended for the first nine games of his career due to an NCAA investigation dating to his recruitment. Multiple other players were suspended throughout the year by Anderson at one time or another. And that doesn’t even address Torren Jones and Cam Beidschied, who were both dismissed from the program before Anderson even coached a game. The roster flux of the previous few years did not slow down.
Following year one, Gill-Caesar and Williams (the team’s leading scorer and rebounder) would transfer. Anderson brought in a four-man freshman class, plus junior college transfers Martavian Payne and Russell Woods. There was much talk of improved team chemistry, which most expected to lead to an improved product on the court. If that improvement occurred, it was minimal.
“I’m sure there’s agreements or disagreements on whether or not we made improvements. I think we did,” Anderson said last week. “It doesn’t always show up statistically, but I think throughout the year we were able to develop a core group of young men who have bought into what we’re trying to do and what we need to do to make this program successful.”
The Tigers won just one more game in year two than they had in year one. Mizzou finished 10-21, bringing the two-year record to 19-44. That includes a 6-31 mark in SEC play and a pair of last place finishes in what has widely been considered the weakest Power Five conference in the country.
The off-court problems didn’t stop either. There were more suspensions throughout the 2015-16 season--though fewer than the year before. In addition, Missouri announced self-imposed sanctions related to the NCAA investigation dating back to Frank Haith’s time at Missouri. The major violations included impermissible benefits to at least 11 student-athletes and one prospective student-athlete between 2011 and 2014. As a result, the Tigers forfeited two scholarships, banned themselves from postseason play this year including the SEC Tournament, paid a fine of $5000 and vacated all 23 wins from Haith’s final season. They permanently disassociated a booster from the program. Fuller had already left to be a special assistant to the president at Harris-Stowe University and was replaced on staff by Corey Tate. The final ruling still has not come down from the NCAA, but it is expected the body will likely accept Missouri's self-imposed punishments as significant enough.
On top of all this, Anderson was now working for a new boss. Alden announced his retirement in January of 2015 and Houston’s Mack Rhoades was tabbed as his successor. Rhoades officially took over in April. He has consistently backed Anderson--who said he was unaware of the pending NCAA investigation when he was hired by Alden--in his short tenure.
“Coach Anderson has been first class. He’s been a great leader in the way he’s handled all of this,” Rhoades said the day Mizzou announced the self-imposed penalties. “Working through this process, coach Anderson was there every step of the way. He is a man of great integrity. I trust he and his staff will continue to do the right things to move this program forward and to make this program something we’re all proud of.”
In addition, the Tigers’ Academic Progress Rate had fallen to 851 following Haith’s final year, which put the Tigers in very poor standing with the NCAA. It is yet unknown how the APR will fare going forward.
“APR is something that you constantly are dealing with,” Anderson said. “Our APR is public record as far as previous to this year. I think that this year’s APR which would be last year’s guys, is gonna be really good. That obviously helps because the APR is a four-year average. We continue to monitor our APR. Our compliance office, our academic people, our administration, coaches, that’s something we deal with daily. We anticipate managing it just fine.”
On March 9th, Rhoades stated publicly that Anderson would return for a third season, though not before exploring other options. One report, which has been confirmed by sources to PowerMizzou.com since, said that he reached out to Washington coach Lorenzo Romar about the job at Mizzou. Sources have indicated that Romar was not the only coach Rhoades investigated. In the end, he chose to stay the course with Anderson, offering a statement three weeks ago:
"This men’s basketball season was a difficult one for our student-athletes, our coaches and for our fans, who continue to support Mizzou through challenging times. No one is satisfied with the number of wins our team has earned in the past two seasons. However, I remain resolute in my belief Mizzou can and should be a nationally relevant basketball program which competes for SEC and NCAA Championships.
Earlier this week I met with Coach Anderson to reaffirm my vision for the program and share with him my expectations for next year. No one wants to win more than Coach Anderson. He came into a very challenging situation two years ago and he is passionate about returning his alma mater to greatness. Consistent with our normal end-of-year processes, in the coming days Coach Anderson and I will review the season in greater depth and discuss any suggested changes that could benefit the program moving forward.
As we turn our attention to next season, we remain fully committed to providing our coaches and student-athletes with the resources and support they need to win at the highest level. I look forward to working with Coach Anderson to reestablish the proud and winning tradition of Mizzou Basketball.”
Missouri lost five more players off of this year’s team. Payne mysteriously left the team “to concentrate on academics” prior to the beginning of the regular season. Wes Clark and Missouri parted ways (Clark said on Twitter he was not dismissed) mid-season. Allen transferred out with two games to go. Isabell and Wright asked for a transfer after the season concluded.
It means a roster with at least six new faces again next season, including Jordan Barnett, a former standout at CBC in St. Louis who transferred back from Texas. Anderson continues to praise his freshman class as the foundation of his program. Kevin Puryear was on the SEC’s all-freshman team and Terrence Phillips became the unquestioned leader of the team. But the pressure is on the group to produce and produce quickly entering Anderson’s third season.
“I’ve been given no ultimatum that you have to win so many games,” Anderson said. “I think we’ll probably do things a little bit differently. I think this summer will probably be a little bit tougher. I think we still need to create a culture of Missouri basketball and I’m not sure we’ve done that completely.”
Anderson was brought in, in large part, to stabilize a Missouri program that has been up-and-down--to put it mildly--for 15 years.
"I just want to come in and bring some consistency and stability from the fact that I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going. I'm here," Anderson said the day he was hired. "I am Mizzou through and through. This is my home state, this is my alma mater and I know how special this program is to so many people."
To this point, it hasn’t happened. The program has not been without its successes in the time since Stewart last stormed the Hearnes Center sidelines. Missouri has had two 30-win seasons and made the Elite Eight twice in that time period. There have been nine NCAA Tournament appearances and ten seasons in which the Tigers were ranked in the nation’s top 25 at one point or another (they finished ranked in the final poll in just three of those seasons).
But the success has never truly been sustained. The average coaching tenure prior to Anderson was just five years. Each coach has stayed a shorter time than the one before him. Missouri has (realistically, though not officially) fired a coach, lost one to Arkansas and one to Tulsa. There have been two NCAA investigations and transfers, dismissals and off-court issues too numerous to count. The last two seasons have produced the lowest win totals since before Stewart returned as head coach.
Clearly, Anderson will enter the 2016-17 season on the hot seat. Speculation will rage daily about his future. What is good enough to save his job? Is Anderson the man to point Missouri basketball back in the direction of where it was some two decades-plus ago? Or will that responsibility fall to someone else? The answer lies 12 months away...after 17 years of turmoil in Tiger basketball.
