Wrong...

Posted on: February 23, 2017 at 13:54:28 CT

First of all, there weren't a lot of good candidates that year.

Second, rather than pursue the few candidates that were actually available, Alden decided to chase Matt Painter down a rabbit hole, a foolish endeavor considering Painter was never going to leave his alma mater Purdue.

Third, there was turmoil and instability in the Big 12, and it was unclear if Mizzou would even remain in a power conference if the Big 12 collapsed, which seemed imminent at the time.

Those added up to hiring Haith, who was currently the head coach at Miami, and overall is an average D-1 coach. He did ok here. Won AP National Coach of the Year, a conference championship, made the NCAA tournament 2 out of 3 seasons, won 23 or more games every season, and even managed to get a #2 seed in the NCAA tournament. So, even under the extreme circumstances, it wasn't the worst hire.

Now, the Kim Anderson hire was inexplicable, especially since we had a proven Final Four caliber coach begging for the job. That was simply due to our administration caving into pressure from blue hairs after Kim had just won the D-2 title. Bad timing, bad decision.