Any basketball season you can walk away from is a good one.
Most Kentucky fans hadn’t heard of Kim Anderson before he was announced the new head coach of the Missouri Tigers. Unless Anderson can change the trajectory of his team, the SEC won’t hear from him much longer.
A longtime assistant coach at Mizzou, Anderson helped build a championship-winning program at Division-II Central Missouri University. When Frank Haith jumped unexpectedly for the relative comforts of Tulsa, Anderson re-entered the D-I ranks and managed to keep top assistant (& top recruiter) Tim Fuller (and Tim’s recruits).
Mizzou fans at RockMNation.com were very delighted and made this:
This GIF was the highest point of Mizzou’s season. Then they nosedived.
Anderson found difficulty changing the existing culture in the locker room. Anderson dismissed Torren Jones, one of the few frontcourt players on the roster. Cameron Biedscheid, who chose to transfer to Haith’s Mizzou team, decided he didn’t want to stay for Anderson’s team.
Players joined the team late due to academics (Keith Shamburger) or reclassification (Montaque Gill-Caesar). Highly-rated freshman Jakeenan Gant was held out of 9 games due to the ubiquitous “receipt of benefits”. Freshmen Gill-Caesar & Namon Wright were suspended for a game; freshman Tramaine Isabell was indefinitely suspended until recently.
#Creaning before it was cool.
Last in the SEC standings is not where Tigers’ fans wanted to be this season, even in a rebuilding year with a new coach. Oh, and during a recruiting trip, Kim Anderson’s plane had to make an emergency landing.
Obviously all this turmoil has crashed-landed Mizzou’s season. However the off-season is not guaranteed put the Tigers back on the level. Anderson’s current recruiting class is not exactly impressive. The young talent Anderson was able to keep on the team – Gill-Caesar, Gant, Isabell – may elect to transfer off to other schools for a fresh start. Without talent, Anderson will be struggling to keep up in an improving SEC.
Kentucky fans should be watching to see if Anderson can finally bring the wreck to a stop. If he can’t, the newest SEC East school may just be minor turbulence for the Wildcats next season too.
Previous This Year In SEC Articles:
* Three Underwhelming Kings (Tennessee, Auburn, South Carolina)
