Who’s to say Mizzou head basketball coach Mike Anderson’s job shouldn’t be on the line as rumors swirl about him possibly leaving for the Arkansas head coaching job.
First let me say, I’m not calling for his job. He has done a masterful job bringing the Missouri basketball program back from the ruins it was left in by the previous regime. He has an Elite Eight appearance in the NCAA Tournament on his resume. And he has brought an exciting brand of basketball to Columbia that makes every game exciting, no matter the opponent.
But herein lies the problem.
Anderson’s Forty Minutes of Hell or Fastest Forty Minutes or whatever you want to call it has worn out its welcome. In his five years at Missouri, he has never had a player taller than 6 feet, 9 inches. Now, that may be a product of the system, but yes, size does matter. Without an inside presence, the Tigers have no one to bang the boards for defensive, or more importantly, offensive rebounds.
When your game is predicated on fast break, run-and-gun scoring, never allowing the opponent to set its defense, shots, many shots are going to be missed, and as the offense is running down the court to take these shots, many times there’s no one there under the basket to get the rebound. And even when Missouri sets up in a half-court offense, it’s run so inefficiently. They are still usually out-sized by their opponent.
There is no question the Tigers can put up the points. Mizzou was near the top of the Big 12 in team scoring all season long, but that means nothing if they aren’t able to defend, especially near the end of the game when everything seems to fall apart for them.
The other obvious problem for Anderson and the Tigers this season has been playing on the road. Everyone always says it’s tough to win on the road in the Big 12. Well, it’s tough to win on the road anywhere, and in any sport. The Tigers finished league play with a dismal 1-7 road record and 8-8 overall. People have their theories as to why the Tigers don’t play well in other’s houses: lack of focus/concentration, playing style doesn’t suit the road team, they’re young, bad officiating etc.
I don’t have a theory about their road woes because they’re probably all true and probably all false, but what I will say is that winning on the road, or the lack thereof, has been an epidemic since Anderson arrived. During his tenure, the Tigers are 13-27 in Big 12 road games with the best season coming in the 2008-2009 season when the Tigers made that Elite Eight run and finished the season 31-7. They were 12-4 in the conference that season.
Now, I come to the one statistic that gets under the skin of Mizzou fans more than any. Mike Anderson boasts a 1-9 record against archrival Kansas in his five years at Missouri. I’ll say that again: Anderson is 1-9 against the Tigers most-hated rival, the Kansas Jayhawks. That lone win came on Feb. 9, 2009. It was the first time both teams met ranked since 2003. The Tigers had to make a furious second-half comeback capped by a Zaire Taylor jumper with 0:01.3 seconds left in the game to give Mizzou the 62-60 win in Columbia.
So, even this win was barely a win. OK, a win is a win, but over those 10 games against Kansas, Anderson and the Tigers haven’t been very competitive, so is this even still a rivalry if one team has been that dominant?
I present these facts, not to paint an ugly picture of Mike Anderson, but for fans to make an educated judgment whether he’s the right coach to lead the Tigers. I like the guy. I thought he was the right hire when Athletic Director Mike Alden chose him to clean up the program. He’s done that, and he’s built a solid and winning program, but is he the right guy to take the Tigers to the next level, and if not, who is?
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