I dunno. Mizzou was never very committed to basketball

Posted on: April 27, 2025 at 13:25:25 CT

except for a few years around the time of Quin Snyder. The only reason we were relevant in the eighties and early nineties was that Norm was a unicorn. Mizzou invested jack squat in all sports as a matter of practice for most of its existence.

They gave Alden a new arena and the means to reach for the brass ring and he came up with Quin Snyder. It didn't work in the long run. I don't think it was an awful move, the timing just wasn't right. After that, it's not like the administration wouldn't let him pay a little bit for a head coach, but it wouldn't let him pay what he'd have to pay to attract a truly elite coach.

That said, Alden didn't do all that well with the resources he had. He should have tried harder to hang on Mike Anderson, who was the last coach here that looked like he had built some sustained momentum. But he fumbled that away, and no one can ever defend the decision to hire Haith. By the time Kim Anderson came around, Alden's balls had been cut off at that point and he had little say in the matter, and university was once again trying to get off cheap.

Alden wasn't great for basketball, but the institutional committment to it wasn't great, either. It was a team effort.