Candidates for the Missouri job ran from Gregg Marshall to Cuonzo Martin to Ben Howland, but they instead hired 58 year old Kim Anderson, whose only head coaching experience has been in Division 2, with Central Missouri.
Now, to be fair, Anderson has been a hell of a coach at that level. He won the national championship this season, and overall has a 274-94 record at Central Missouri. However, his only D1 experience comes in the form of assistant jobs, and nothing since 1999.
Anderson is going to have to assemble a top notch staff in order to get recruits, and he’s going to have to work his butt off to get butts in the seats in Columbia after the decrease seen in the last couple years of Frank Haith’s tenure.
Making things worse for Anderson is that the Spring live period for evaluating recruits ended yesterday. Yesterday. So Missouri could have hired him 10 days ago and let him evaluate guys, but instead he won’t be able to until July.
Hey, this could be a hire that totally works out and Anderson could do a great job for Missouri for 10 years or so before he retires, but the circus that this hiring process became, and the general constraints he has working against him, means Missouri could be going through this process sooner rather than later.
