ChiefsPlanet - MU **** OFFICIAL MIZZOU vs Marquette NCAA Round 2 Game Thread ****

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Mizzou is now an easy team to embrace
By Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Sunday, Mar. 22 2009

BOISE, IDAHO — Every year about this time, one of the greatest joys of March
Madness is the discovery of a perfectly charming basketball teams who literally
jump off your NCAA bracket sheet and practically scream, "embrace me."

They are the sort of team that confirms that everything really is just fine in
our sports world. The players are genuinely enjoyable to encounter. They are
full of wonderful stories, aren't the least bit jaded, honestly live true to
the premise of the student-athlete, and are the embodiment of every old-school
notion about a college team being anchored by savvy seniors and infused with
impetuous and eager-to-please freshmen.

So excuse me while I take another opportunity to marvel at the transformation
of the Missouri Tigers from the most dysfunctional band of trouble makers only
a bail bondsman could love to that extraordinary March Madness darling.

The 29-6 Tigers, ranked ninth in the nation and a third seed in the NCAA West
Regionals, are one game away from the Sweet 16. A victory over Marquette on
Sunday afternoon will give Mizzou a school-record 30 victories, and no doubt
produce a bandwagon full of Tiger loyalists in Arizona next week.

But with or without a victory here at Taco Bell Arena, Missouri basketball has
officially become a success story simply because the Tigers have repaired
themselves from within. While head coach Mike Anderson deserves a lions' share
of the credit for being the architect of this basketball revival, none of it
would have been possible without the players wanting to buy in.

This is the type of thing that normally only happens at mid-major schools. You
don't often see this at major college basketball programs anymore, the natural
process of a program growing from within. Freshmen turning into sophomores,
sophomores into juniors, juniors into seniors. The seniors passing down the
legacy to the freshmen; everyone blends together at one special moment to
create a season to remember.

This is what has happened to the Tigers, who are prospering because the elders
on the team are handling the responsibility of leadership in the right way.

"Last year set the stage for this year," said Anderson before the team's final
practice on Saturday. "Our seniors like Leo (Lyons), DeMarre (Carroll), Matt
(Lawrence) and Michael (Anderson) Jr. are hungry and they wanted to make sure
this was a special year. They couldn't wait to be put in a position where they
could do it. You see a guy like Leo. People say, 'Leo, a leader?' And I say,
Yeah, Leo. He's in a position now. And result is, there's camaraderie with this
team now. There's a bond that's taking place."

During the last few years, when the leadership void was glaring, the
underclassmen during those years remembered biting their tongues as they saw
how rotten leadership wrecks a season. The so-called leaders of the team were
constantly breaking team rules, putting themselves, their teammates and the
basketball program's reputation in harm's way.

"I think the reason we struggled back then was because of the (lack of)
leadership," Lyons said. "Not to blame those guys, but now we have a better
understanding of what it takes to lead. Now we have guys who have been here for
three years, who have been in this system and we know it like the back of our
hand. So it's easy for us to go out and lead and be captains."

Lyons tried to be a bit on the politically correct side when he answered the
question. But the inference was clear: what he and his current teammates
learned most about leadership from their early years in the program was exactly
how NOT to lead.

As he stood in a corridor near his locker room, Mike Anderson had to laugh when
he heard how diplomatically his players tapped danced around how poorly the
likes of Jason Horton, Stefon Hannah and the rest of the old gang had handled
their leadership roles.

"Well, I think it's true," Anderson admitted. "I saw it in the meetings. I
always said that it's hard to be a leader because sometimes you have to say
things that aren't popular. But the real problem was that (the prior team
captains) would say things to the younger guys and they weren't practicing what
they were preaching. Well some of our guys told me, 'It's hard for me to follow
a guy when I know what he's doing.'

"That's why this year has been so special because the leadership has emerged
and the ownership, too. Now these guys say, 'Oh DeMarre? Yeah, I can look up to
him. Leo, yeah, I see how he does things. Matt? I can look up to him too.'"

What they look up to are seniors who stay out of trouble and play hard. They
can look up to upperclassmen like Carroll, Lawrence and J.T. Tiller.

"What's really great is that we have guys that are willing to listen to the
guys who are older and have actually seen the bad stuff happen, and they know
we know what we're talking about," Lawrence said. "That's why it was so special
this year. We had the ability to bring the new guys in here and explain things.
We told them this is how we're going to act, this is the way we're going to
play, this is the way we're going to act in the community, this is the way
we're going to be portrayed in the media. We've had a lot of negative light
that has reflected on us on the basketball court, but now it's kind of awesome
because there's nothing like that asked anymore.

"It's just about basketball," Lawrence said. "Everyone only wants to talk about
basketball, and that's awesome."