Mizzou Tiger Hoops

Now I understand all we have seen from this team is a scrimmage and two exhibition games, but I still have yet to see any of the promises that Mike Anderson claimed when he was hired.

I will not claim that I watched every UAB game under Anderson, but I do remember games he coached in the tournament.  UAB was not the most talented team in the tourney and rarely even the more talented team in any particular game.  But never were they out of a game because they could always rattle off 10 points before the other team got the ball across the mid-court stripe.  And that style is what got Mike Anderson hired here at Mizzou.

So I ask, is it too much to ask for to actually run the style of defense Anderson told us we would see?  A few times a game the press is run as full speed.  Traps, deflections, diving players.  Exciting basketball.  Apparently for Coach Anderson it must be too much to handle for these players.

Finally Anderson has a full roster of “his” players.  Yet still the Tigers truly press less than half of the possessions, and we have no explanations as to why not.  It can’t be that there aren’t good enough athletes (Carroll, Tiller, Safford, Taylor, Denmon, Bowers, Ramsey).  It can’t be youth because the Tigers were one of the oldest team in D1 last year and we didn’t see it.  And it can’t be because the Big 12 can handle the pressure because the Tigers aren’t doing it against each other in scrimmages or against the D2 teams Mizzou has been playing.

So here’s to hoping it changes, or we may be in for 40 minutes of hell ourselves.

-Ken Boehlke