The Best Tigers Ever?

With Mike Anderson’s contract finalized and all of the team awards handed out, it’s a good time to take one final look back at Missouri’s incredible and—no matter what Kim English says—improbable season that ended one game short of Detroit with a school-record 31 wins.

Near the end of the season, and especially after it ended, people were beginning to wonder if this was the best team in Mizzou history. After all, the Tigers have never made the Final Four, and they compiled two impressive wins over top five teams. At the team’s season wrap-up, one reporter even went around asking the players what it was like to be on the “winningest team in school history.”

Well, that depends on how you define “winningest.” Although the ‘75-’76 and ‘81-’82 teams could be in the discussion, the title of best modern-era Missouri basketball team has to go to either this year’s team, or the team that lost in the Elite Eight in 1994. That team was 28-4, giving it a better winning percentage (.875 to .816), even though it had three fewer wins.

Actually, both teams have quite a bit in common. They were both unranked until late December, both were led by seniors, both went undefeated at home, and both faltered in the Elite Eight. Also, both teams suffered somewhat surprising losses in their first game as a ranked team.

Before deciding which team was better, I’m going to compare them in the following four categories: Talent/Expectations, Nonconference schedule, conference schedule (including the tournament), and NCAA tournament.

Talent/Expectations

This one’s closer than you might think, since both teams were unranked to start the season and not expected to come close to what they actually accomplished. Additionally, it’s a little harder to judge the talent of this year’s team, since so many of the players still have some basketball to play in their careers.

Jevon Crudup of the ‘94 team was drafted in the second round and Melvin Booker—who was a consensus Second Team All-American and averaged 18.5 points and 4.5 assists per game—played 32 games in the NBA. The 1994 team was returning its top three scorers (all seniors) from a season in which it went 19-14 and lost in the NCAA's first round after winning the Big 12 tournament.

DeMarre Carroll was first-team All-Big 12 and Honorable Mention All-American, and Leo Lyons has a good chance to be a second-round draft pick. But besides those two, and perhaps Matt Lawrence, this year’s team was full of question marks after a tumultuous 16-16 season, in which arguably the team’s most talented player, Stefhon Hannah, was kicked off the team, and most of the key players were suspended for at least one game.

Although the starting lineup featured three seniors, a third-year junior, and a juco transfer, seven newcomers were brought in to play Mike Anderson’s fast-paced style of basketball, with none of them being can’t-miss recruits. They were picked to finish seventh in the co