re: Mizzou fans would you take Mike Anderson back if you could?

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Nope, heres why, 40 minutes only works at home. havoc and 40 minutes is a bust.

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To me, this is the fallacy that many believe without looking deeper. The Nolan/MA style of 40 Minutes will work anywhere - home, away, neutral. The caveat is that it must have an abundance of the right talent. Gotta have a PG who can distribute and make everyone better on offense and absolutely shut down the other team's pg on the defensive end (see Beck, Corey). Bulldogs and sharpshooters with really long arms needed at the 2, 3, and 4 positions. Not so important at the 4, actually. The best team Nolan ever had featured Corliss who played 4/5 and was a beast on both ends of the floor, but it also had Dwight Stewart who was not much defensively but was very dangerous offensively. All of the great Nolan teams had a 6th man who could start on most other teams. Roger Crawford, Ron Huery and Lenzie Howell all fit that bill. Then, your next 4 off the bench had to be high energy guys who could maintain the lead that the first wave built. The 40 Minutes is predicated on (A) superior talent; and (B) superior depth. It is a thing of beauty when those pieces are in place. That's a fairly obvious observation that is true for all styles - Superior talent and superior depth will win any time, anywhere.

However, where the 40 Minutes philosophy breaks down is when those elements are not in place. Take a guy like Bill Self or Eddie Sutton or Krzyzewski - any of the greats - and they can adapt to their players' strengths and/or exploit an opponent's specific weakness. The 40 Minutes philosophy doesn't do that. The 40 Minutes is a hammer and everything it sees is a nail. There is no adapting. If a team is not collapsing under its pressure, there's not really a Plan B.

It's taken MA 4 years to get the right pieces in place - the right talent at the right spots on the floor, plus the depth to sub in and out. We're seeing it start to pay off - home and road. The system can work, but the window in which it operates successfully is just a whole lot smaller than other systems.