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 next four days, PowerMizzou.com will look at how Missouri basketball went from that lofty perch to its current status. We will break this series down by coaching tenures. Each part will examine the program and key events under each of the four coaches since Stewart.
Stormin’ Norman announced his retirement (and, yes, you can take that term as loosely as you would like) on April 1, 1999. Six days later, hot shot Duke assistant Quin Snyder was named as his replacement.
"Quin Snyder has impressed everyone involved with this search over the last several days,” Mike Alden said at the time. “Last Thursday, we began calling athletic directors, conference commissioners, basketball coaches, television analysts and others for coaching recommendations and Quin's name came up on every list. We feel fortunate that we have been able to attract a coach with such impressive credentials.
“Coach Stewart left us with a legacy of great basketball tradition and success. We want to utilize that and couple it with the special talents of Quin Snyder to give MU a springboard to a bright future.”
The process to get to Snyder was a quick one, but not without controversy. It has been well-documented that Snyder was one of two finalists. The other was Bill Self. Missouri’s hiring committee was split but settled on the then 32-year old top assistant to Mike Krzyzewski. Self would take Tulsa to the Elite Eight in 2000, then jump to Illinois. He won the Big Ten and reached the Elite Eight in his first season. The Illini made three NCAA Tournaments in three seasons under Self before he left for Kansas. Bruce Weber coached the team he left behind to the 2005 national title game and a record of 37-2.
Snyder’s first four seasons were an indication that Missouri may continue on a similar path it had been on under Stewart. The Tigers made the NCAA Tournament in all four seasons. They won 18, 20, 24 and 22 games. The efforts on the recruiting trail were perhaps even more exciting. Snyder wrapped up Kareem Rush as his opening salvo and would land top 50 players Thomas Gardner, Linas Kleiza and Marshall Brown, plus top 100 prospects Kalen Grimes, Jason Horton and Glen Dandridge in his first four years.
Snyder’s first season ended with a loss to North Carolina team that would make a run to the Final Four as an eight seed. He made the second round (losing to Duke) the following year. 2001-02 was a disappointing regular season, but the Tigers snuck into the tournament field as one of the final at large selections and advanced all the way to the Elite Eight before falling to fellow Big 12 foe Oklahoma. It would be the closest Snyder would come to returning to the Final Four as a coach, an event he played in three times.
The Tigers started the 2002-03 season 10-1, including wins over Memphis, USC, Iowa and Baylor. A January 13th loss at Syracuse left the Tigers 10-2, but things looked promising with Arthur Johnson, Rickey Paulding, Travon Bryant (the Tigers’ first McDonald’s all-American in a decade) and juco point guard Rickey Clemons leading the way. At that point, Snyder was 72-40 and had never missed the NCAA Tournament. Missouri’s winning percentage in Stewart’s final four years was .6697. It’s winning percentage in Snyder’s first three-and-a-half was .6428. If there had been a dip, it hadn’t been substantial, and had been made up for by the postseason success (Mizzou was 4-3 in the NCAA Tournament in those seasons).
Four days after the Syracuse game, Clemons’ girlfriend filed a police report claiming the Tigers’ point guard had choked her at his apartment. Clemons would remain on the team and in the starting lineup the rest of the season. Mizzou fell from 11th in the country on January 14th to unranked by February 18th. A run to the Big 12 championship game landed Mizzou a sixth seed in the tournament, but Dwyane Wade and Marquette ended Missouri’s season in the second round on March 22, 2003. It would be the last tournament game the Tigers would play for six years.
After the season, Clemons would plead guilty to charges of misdemeanor assault and false imprisonment. He was suspended for the season and would spend 60 days in jail, during which time embarrassing tapes surfaced containing conversations between Clemons and the wives of Missouri administrators. In those conversations, Clemons claimed he was paid to play at Missouri. (And the bizarre part is those claims weren't the most humiliating part of the tapes).
Clemons was by then already dismissed from the team, but an NCAA investigation followed. That investigation submarined what had begun as a promising Missouri season. Paulding, Johnson and Bryant were seniors, Jason Conley transferred from Virginia Military Institute, prize recruit Jimmy McKinney was a sophomore and the freshman class was led by Thomas Gardner and Linas Kleiza. The Tigers were ranked fifth in the country in the preseason and were as high as third on December ninth. Four weeks later, they were out of the rankings altogether. They limped to a 16-14 finish and lost to Michigan in the first round of the NIT.
In November of 2004, findings of the NCAA investigation were announced. The Tigers were barred from recruiting off-campus for a year (a virtual death sentence for a college basketball program), lost three scholarships and were on NCAA probation for three years. Snyder would be gone by the time that sentence ended.
He coached just another year-and-a-half after the investigation was finished. Missouri finished 16-17 in 2004-05. Kleiza went pro after that season. Many expected Snyder would be fired after that year, but he returned for the 2005-06 season. Mizzou opened that year with a home loss to Sam Houston State. The Tigers would lose at Arkansas and Davidson before being humiliated by Illinois, 82-50. Missouri rebounded to win six of its next seven, including at Oklahoma and an overtime victory against Kansas in which Gardner scored 40 points. But the Tigers would lose their next six games including a 90-64 shellacking at Baylor.
Two days after that game, Mike Alden said that Snyder would finish the season as Missouri’s coach. The next day, Snyder told reporters he would not resign: "No, it's never been suggested to me. There's been plenty of times that that option could have come up. I'm coaching my team so I'm going to keep doing that until someone tells me not to and keep working as hard as I can."
It was Snyder’s last game as Missouri’s head coach. He was told the very next day. Missouri issued only a statement: "Quin Snyder will not coach the University of Missouri men's basketball team this Sunday. Associate head coach Melvin Watkins will serve as the acting head coach for the Kansas State game. That is all we can say at this time."
Officially, Snyder’s departure was termed a resignation. It wasn’t. It would later be reported that Alden sent Gary Link (the Tigers’ color commentator and an assistant to Alden in the athletic department) to inform Snyder he would not be retained.
"It wasn't coach's decision," Jason Horton said at the time. "Regardless of what is said, I don't think it was coach's decision. He wasn't given much of a decision. I'm still really hurt about it because I felt like we have a ton of season left."
"I know he didn't step down. I know he didn't quit on us. I don't know exactly what went on, but I just know he didn't quit," Marshall Brown said.
The confluence of problems came at the worst possible time. For in Poplar Bluff was a high school star more highly regarded than the state of Missouri had produced in years. Tyler Hansbrough, a five-star prospect and the No. 10 player in the class of 2005, was long considered a strong possibility for the Tigers. He was the kind of player a program is built (or re-built) around. He was a superstar in the making, but also one whose limitations at the NBA level would mean multiple years in college. But the uncertainty around the program contributed to Hansbrough signing with North Carolina.
Hansbrough would become one of the most decorated players in college basketball history. He was the national player of the year runner-up as Carolina won the national championship during his senior season. He is the Tar Heels all-time leading scorer and was a four-time all-American. Snyder would be fired just three months into his freshman season and Missouri would not return to the NCAA Tournament until Hansbrough was a senior.
Snyder’s first four years were a success, but his last three-and-a-half put the program in a deep hole. The Tigers were just 47-53 in his final 100 games and the product on the court had clearly taken a hit.
But beyond that, the Snyder era left scars that can still be seen on the Tiger basketball program. The NCAA investigation and the stranger-than-fiction soap opera atmosphere around the program had made Missouri a national punchline. So impacted by the NCAA violations was Alden that multiple sources over many years have told PowerMizzou.com he kept a much tighter leash on the basketball program than others at the University (over multiple coaching staffs for nearly a decade). While other sports flourished, the inconsistency of the basketball program--and its inability to hire and keep successful coaches--would be the black mark on Alden's resume in Columbia.
Missouri’s 2005-2006 season would end on March 9 with a 71-64 loss to Nebraska in the Big 12 Tournament in Dallas. Alden would, for the second time, embark on a search for a new basketball coach.
Tomorrow: The Mike Anderson Years
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