The good: He is a good person, plays by the rules and recruits about good as can be expected. Arkansas is a small state and doesn’t have the recruiting base of teams like Florida, Alabama, Georgia, LSU, and TA&M, plus Kentucky in basketball. And, we are perhaps even with Auburn, SC, and Mississippi. Therefore, on average we shouldn’t be expected to be in the top 2/3rd and certainly not the top half of the SEC. The fact that we do considerable better than that implies to me that Anderson is well above average as an SEC coach.
Even a Nolan clone wouldn’t win near as much now because he wouldn’t have the recruiting advantage of being the only major black college coach in the south.
The bad: With two all SEC guards, a future top 15 NBA big man, and five seniors that either start or play a lot, Anderson will never have a better combination of talent and experience. Therefore, you will never be satisfied with Anderson if you believe he should do better than this year.
When BJ Young had the ball he would never pass it and to some extent, Barford and Macon remind me of that. Therefore, it seems to me that Anderson lacks the ability to require his guards to pass the ball instead of letting them dribbling for 10 seconds trying to get open while well guarded. And, he relies too much trapping to get turnovers because that leaves someone open for a layup or a wide open 3 pointer. And maybe that partly explains why other teams out rebounds us. As, I see it, a possession is worth about a point. Therefore, a turnover gains a possession and cost the other team a possession. Therefore, 10 extra turnovers might be worth 20 extra rebounds for the other team, except for the fact that trapping, when unsuccessful, leads to layups and wide open 3s by the other team.
In my opinion, it is not realistic to expect that Anderson will be replaced. We can’t hire an established top 5 or even a top 10 coach. And, although I wish we could, even if we could find a genius young coach like Eddie Sutton was, no one in authority would dare take the chance that he might not be successful like the coach Anderson replaced.