ATHLETICS

Anderson Has Paid
His Coaching Dues

Editor’s Note: This April 9, 2006, article has been republished with permission from the Columbia Daily Tribune.

By Steve Walentik

There was a smile on his face as he walked through the hallways of Mizzou Arena on Monday afternoon. With one of the most hectic weeks of his life behind him, Mike Anderson looked relaxed.

That’s not to say he wasn’t at ease eight days before when he stepped to the podium in the middle of Norm Stewart Court to be introduced as Missouri’s new men’s basketball coach, the 16th man to hold that position.

Dressed in a dark suit and donning a black Mizzou cap, Anderson put his passion and confidence on display for the MU faithful. He injected a bit of humor and relayed his goal of bringing a national championship to Columbia. His first public appearance as the Tigers’ coach drew rave reviews from all in attendance.

But Anderson didn’t get into coaching to wear suits or speak from podiums. That’s not why he gave up his steady job selling office supplies almost 25 years ago, or why he’s moved his family from Oklahoma to Arkansas to Alabama and now Missouri, not always knowing what was to come.

He and his wife, Marcheita, did those things so he could be on the court like he was Monday, dressed in a gold T-shirt and black shorts, watching a basketball team — his team — take the first step to what he believes will be success.

Players darted around cones and past tackling dummies, training their bodies to play the “Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball,” because Anderson swears he’ll accept nothing less.

“The off-season, to me, is when basketball players are made, and I think teams are made,” Anderson said. “We’ve got a little time before the summer comes. Before you know it, it will be late August and school will be starting.”

******

The most important stop on Anderson’s journey into coaching, one that eventually brought him to Columbia, was the out-of-the-way town of Hutchinson, Kan. It’s been the site of the National Junior College Athletic Association basketball championship every year since 1949.

In 1980, Jefferson State Community College played its way into the championship field. Leading the way was a scrappy point guard from Birmingham, Ala., named Mike Anderson.

He’d grown up one of eight children at the height of the civil-rights movement in one of the South’s biggest cities, but Anderson doesn’t remember much about the protest marches or police brutality that now define the era.

His world didn’t stretch more than a few blocks — the distance from his parents’ three-room house to the one where his grandmother lived — and it was insulated.

Following the lead of his four older brothers, Anderson got involved in sports at an early age, playing basketball, baseball and a little sandlot football. By the time he graduated high school, he’d turned into an all-city and all-state guard despite the fact he was just 6-foot and 170 pounds.

Those who know him best say he made up for his lack of size with an abnormally large competitive streak.

“He don’t care if he’s playing pingpong,” said Jeff Daniels, a junior college teammate. “He’s competitive.”

Neither that nor his strong academic record was enough to get him a scholarship to a four-year school. He enrolled at Jefferson State and joined the basketball team. By his sophomore season, he’d pushed the Birmingham school to within hoping distance of a national title with his relentless play.

This was no juggernaut. In fact, that might be putting it politely.

“They had the worst-looking team in America,” Nolan Richardson said flatly.

Richardson already had signed a contract to be the next head coach at Tulsa when he brought his Western Texas College team to that 1980 championship tournament. He remembers watching a pair of Jefferson State games, wondering exactly how it was winning but admiring the play of the team’s point guard.

Suddenly, he was on the sideline, watching his own team tip off against Anderson’s club.

Western Texas was unbeaten heading into that title game and a heavy favorite to claim the school’s second NJCAA championship in six seasons. But somehow Richardson’s team found itself trailing at halftime.

“We’ve got to keep running at this little guy because he likes to take charges, he’ll give his body up, he’ll do whatever it takes for victory,” Richardson remembered telling his team at intermission.

The strategy paid off about midway through the second half when Anderson stepped in to take a charge and was whistled for his fifth foul. What was a close game when he exited quickly turned in Western Texas’ favor.

“We were just kind of hanging on,” said Daniels, who doesn’t remember too many details about the game but is adamant the blocking foul was a bad call. “It was kind of like having a coach kicked out of the game.”

Western Texas eventually won 85-72. But the biggest prize Richardson got that night wasn’t the trophy that came with that title. It was his point guard for two years and right-hand man for much longer.

So impressed was Richardson by what he’d seen of Anderson that the coach offered the player the chance to join him at Tulsa, then sold his mother, Lucy, on sending her son away from the only home he’d ever known.

******

With Anderson as his point guard, Richardson compiled a 50-13 record in his first two seasons at Tulsa, becoming one of the fastest coaches to reach 50 victories in Division I history. The Golden Hurricanes won the 1981 National Invitation Tournament, and Anderson was named to the all-tournament team. A year later, Tulsa advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

That’s where Anderson’s playing career ended. Like most all college players, he had hopes of playing professionally and tried going the free-agent route after the 1982 draft. He got a tryout with the Atlanta Hawks, and it was a reality check.

“I saw a lot of players who were a lot older than I was, and they were still kind of chasing their dream,” he said.

Recognizing that his size would limit his professional opportunities and with his degree to fall back on, Anderson returned to Tulsa and got a job selling office supplies. He did well, capitalizing on the name he’d made for himself as a player.

He remained a regular around the Tulsa practice gym. One day he walked into Richardson’s office and said, “I want to coach.”

Anderson didn’t need Richardson to tell him he already had a full staff and that there was no paying position available. But Richardson reminded him, anyway.

“He said, ‘I’ll volunteer my time. I’ll work in the day, and I’ll be here every day at practice time, an hour or an hour and a half before practice where we can go over everything you need me to do,’” Richardson remembered Anderson saying. “That was dedication.”

Anderson worked during the day that first year then showed up at the gym in the afternoon to help run practice and learn all he could from Richardson.

Eventually, he gave up the office-supply job and put all his focus into being a coach.

He and his new wife did all right in Tulsa, where they had some support from Marcheita’s family. Then, in 1985, after Anderson’s third season as a volunteer assistant, Richardson accepted the head-coaching position at Arkansas, succeeding Eddie Sutton. Richardson wanted Anderson to follow him to Fayetteville, but he still could not offer him a paying position.

Marcheita was skeptical about making such a move with a young daughter, Darcheita, by then in the picture, but she had enough faith in her husband to go along. The couple moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Fayetteville. She got a job and a baby-sitter for her daughter. Richardson gave them what he could to help the couple get by.

For Anderson, it didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice. It wasn’t too different from the way he’d grown up in Birmingham, where his family — all 10 members, plus the dog — would sometimes pile into its only car to get across town.

“We didn’t know that we didn’t have much,” said brother Lee Anderson. “When you don’t ever have it, you think your family’s rich. We ate three square meals a day. We had clothes.”

Anderson grew especially close to Richardson during those early years in Fayetteville. He spent a lot of time in Richardson’s home and befriended the coach’s daughter, Yvonne, who was suffering from leukemia. Anderson sometimes would even drive her across the Midwest to get treatment until she died in 1987. His daughter Yvonne, the youngest of his three children and now a sophomore in high school, is named after her.

The first time an assistant job opened up, in 1988, Richardson promoted Anderson to fill it. He got another promotion after the Razorbacks’ first Final Four appearance in 1990, when Richardson made him his recruiting coordinator and assistant head coach.

Anderson helped recruit the foundation of the 1994 national championship team, luring players such as Corliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman to Arkansas.

“Personality is very important in this business,” Richardson said. “If Mike sits in your house and talks to a parent, they believe him. He’s not one of these guys that’s wheeling and dealing and conniving. He’s not that kind of a person.”

Anderson also had shown himself to be a capable coach whenever Richardson would let him run practice. He thoroughly understood the coach’s system, having excelled in it as a player.

When Arkansas made it to its second consecutive national championship game in 1995, Anderson seemed on the coaching fast track, but he’d wait seven years for his first head-coaching opportunity.

******

Richardson wouldn’t let Anderson take just any job. He was always worried his pupil would go someplace with little chance to succeed, and then he’d get stuck there, watching the losses accumulate on his coaching record until it was tarnished beyond repair.

Jobs came open that intrigued Anderson, including at his alma mater in 2000 and ’01. The first year, Tulsa opted to hire Buzz Peterson as Bill Self’s replacement. Then, after Peterson left for Tennessee, John Phillips got the nod, leaving Anderson waiting once more on the sideline in Fayetteville.

Ironically, it wasn’t until Anderson had to find a new job that the right fit finally presented itself.

Richardson was fired with weeks remaining in the 2002 season for making comments deemed to be disparaging about the Arkansas program. After 17 years in Fayetteville, Anderson was also on the way out.

“Sometimes things happen for a reason,” he said. “Sometimes we don’t understand it, but sometimes the Lord sends you down a path.”

That path led back home to Birmingham, where Murry Bartow stepped down after six seasons succeeding his father, Gene. The Blazers were coming off a 13-17 campaign.

Athletic Director Herman Frazier was looking for someone who could turn things around, and Anderson was one of the first people he interviewed.

“I knew he had been on the bench for a very long time at Arkansas,” said Frazier, now the athletic director a Hawaii. “I knew that he had been to Final Fours with Arkansas. I knew he was involved in the recruitment of athletes, but I also knew that he had more hands-on coaching experience than people had given him credit for.”

Frazier also knew Arkansas wouldn’t consider hiring him, considering the way Richardson left the university.

He met with Anderson about two weeks before the Final Four then set up meetings with three other head coaches, all of whom Frazier said had proven track records.

“At the end of the day, my gut feeling told me that Mike Anderson was just as good and probably a little bit hungrier,” Frazier said.

Even he admits he couldn’t have predicted Anderson having so much success so quickly.

It helped that the first-time head coach was able to steer some of the recruits he’d signed at Arkansas to UAB after Richardson’s dismissal. Those players formed the nucleus of a team that produced the biggest single-season turnaround in college basketball in 2003. The Blazers went 21-13 in Anderson’s first season and made the NIT.

A year later, the team finished 22-10 and earned a share of the Conference USA regular-season title. That was enough to get the Blazers a bid to the NCAA Tournament, where they knocked off Washington and top-seeded Kentucky in back-to-back games.

UAB won more than 20 games and reached the NCAA Tournament each of the next two years under Anderson, but it wasn’t the victories or postseason appearances that endeared Anderson to fans in Birmingham. It was his team’s style of play — relentless, fast-paced, for the full 40 minutes.

“In Birmingham, they were coming to watch UAB play,” said former UAB assistant Matt Zimmerman, who, like Daniels, was hired to be on Anderson’s staff at Missouri. “Regardless of who you play, they’re coming to see UAB. Coach drove that with the effort that our teams played with.”

Zimmerman recalled the night Cincinnati, at the time ranked 17th in the country, visited Bartow Arena in 2004. UAB oversold the building and had fans sitting in the aisles as the Blazers forced 21 turnovers and pulled off the upset of Bob Huggins’ squad.

One person in the stands that night was Anderson’s mother, Lucy, who got to watch her son coach two seasons at UAB before her death.

******

Anderson could have stayed at UAB, surrounded by family and friends, in a city where he was beloved. He could have continued leading the Blazers to the NCAA Tournament while playing in front of full crowds at Bartow Arena. Eventually, he might have even had a building or two named after him.

But when Missouri Athletic Director Mike Alden called to discuss the Tigers’ vacancy last month, Anderson had to listen.

The chance to coach in the Big 12 Conference and work in $75 million Mizzou Arena, with all its amenities, had to be considered. Besides, if he could succeed at Missouri’s flagship school he’d get first crack at the state’s top prep prospects. No more fighting Alabama and Auburn for the best local talent.

From Anderson’s point of view, all that would bring him closer to his ultimate goal: a national championship. He had to go for it.

Anderson decided to accept Missouri’s offer on March 25 and was introduced as the Tigers’ new head coach the next afternoon. The following week was a blur as he traveled from Columbia to Birmingham to Indianapolis for the Final Four, accepting congratulations from family, friends, fans and fellow coaches at every stop along the way.

He’ll do more than his share of meet-and-greets in the coming months, too, as he introduces himself to the Missouri faithful.

But those are secondary responsibilities. First comes erasing the scars of a 12-16 season and molding a team that can compete in the Big 12. First come the hours in the gym.

“It’s time to go to work,” Anderson said. “That’s when I’m in my element.”

Mike Anderson’s Coaching Record

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