I'm pretty much a football guy. Always have been even when basketball was enjoying more success. Shortly after my own college experience ended, Missouri wound up with one of the best recruiting classes in the nation when Norm Stewart brought in 2 of the highest rated high schoolers in the nation, Steve Stipanovich and Jon Sunvold. All those guys did was win 4 Big 8 titles during their careers. They were never able to get to a final 4 however which sort of taints our memories of them. It was a different era however and Norm Stewart put much more emphasis on winning the conference, in part because there were fewer teams in the NCAA's then and winning conference was the only way you could be relatively sure of even reaching the tournament. Plus, Norm had an almost Don Fambroughish obsession with beating kansas. Just without the obvious wide eyed fanaticism.
I pretty much quit paying attention to basketball during the last 3 years or so of the Quin Snyder era. Talk about an unmitigated fucking disaster. He was considered to be the next "can't miss" guy by most of the pundits and frankly a whole lot of Missouri fans, including myself. To watch him gradually circle the drain following the Ricky Clemon's episode, along with my enthusiasm for the program was disheartening to say the least. But we did get a really nice arena out of the deal I guess.
But then, in yet another of the weirder days in Missouri sports history, and if you know anything about Missouri, you know we've had some really bizarre incidents in our past. (5th down anyone?) On March 26th, 2006, Mike Anderson was to be announced as the new head coach of the Tigers following the termination of Snyder by Missouri play by play announcer Gary Link. Seriously. No need to make up stories about Missouri, we can do weirder shit on our own just by accident. Anyway, the press conference was delayed while the Board of Curators was holding a meeting on whether or not to fire athletic director Mike Alden for the botched firing among other things. So we have television cameras and reporters but no athletic director and a coach sitting in the back wondering whether the contract he'd just signed was going to be worth the paper it was printed on. When push came to shove, Alden was able to hold on by the skin of his teeth and Mike Anderson's hiring was complete.
The first couple of years was tough for Anderson as he had to work with kids he'd not recruited and didn't have the sort of discipline and dedication you need to succeed in his "Fastest 40 minutes of basketball" system. Unexpected losses, player altercations and a general belief that Anderson would never be able to get it done marred those first 2 seasons. Then in year 3 it came together for him and his team as transfer and nephew Demarre Carrol and former Quin recruit Leo Lyons led the Tigers to the Big 12 tournament title, a 3rd seed in the tournament and an elite 8 finish. Losing those 2 players plus fellow graduate Matt Lawrence made most of the experts again doubt Coach and the team was picked 7th in the league pre-season with little chance to be successful. However, all that prevented them from another top 4 finish was an injury to junior Justin Safford which contributed to a late season swoon. They did manage to notch one win at the dance before falling last Sunday to a good West Virginia team coached by that bastion of virtue, Bob Huggins, who was considered for the job when Anderson was hired.
The future looks bright for the Tigers again. A good portion of this years team were just sophomores and he's bringing in his best recruiting class to date including high flyer Tony Mitchell and point guard Phil Pressey, son of his lifelong friend and college room mate and former NBA player Paul Pressey. While Coach Anderson may never enjoy a stretch of league titles that Coach Stewart did, his system is built for the NCAA tournament and I firmly believe Missouri's first final 4 appearance will occur sooner than later. Between he and Gary Pinkel, people are finally realizing that Mike Alden is a pretty damn good judge of coaches when he's not also being charged with finding 25 million dollars for a new arena.
A few things to talk about concerning spring football and that's what I'll be getting to next time. Have a good week.
Merlin, Thanks for your comment on my Bigfoot post. It WAS an April Fool's prank, and I actually posted it today. But since I started the message last night and saved it, it had a 3/31 date when I posted it today. I have corrected the date by simply deleting that original post and creating a new and identical post (which has today's date). In that process, your comment was deleted, but that was the only way to fix the date problem.
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