For Mike Anderson, Scotty Thurman is the Right Answer to the Wrong Question

Yesterday, it was announced that long time Mike Anderson assistant coach Matt Zimmerman had been relieved of his duties as assistant coach, and was going to be replaced by former Arkansas Razorback and current Director of Student-Athlete Development for the Hogs, Scotty Thurman. My question is, what does Thurman actually provide for the Razorbacks that Zimmerman didn’t?

When you have as bad of a 12 month stretch as the Arkansas Razorbacks and Mike Anderson have had, someone is going to pay the price. Say what you will about Anderson, but he held off on making any hard changes to his staff longer than most coaches are able to.

But these 5 years in Fayetteville for Coach Anderson have not lived up to the hype that fans had when he came in. And after going 16-16 in year 5, having an entire recruiting class disappear from campus, and missing out on huge in state recruits, we all knew that something had to change.

I was not surprised when news broke that there was going to be a shakeup on the bench for Anderson’s staff. I saw it coming. Fans and boosters were wanting some change, and they got it. What I WAS surprised by, however, was the people involved in that shakeup. Matt Zimmerman has been with Anderson as an assistant since UAB, and has played a huge part in building and running Anderson’s system.

Zimmerman is the guy that sets the tempo at practice, and can be given direct credit for the development of some of the players at Arkansas in his time there, particularly the guards. The biggest things that Zimmerman brought to the table were his development skills and personality. Everyone loves Matt, and when you look at the improvement in all around play from guys like Michael Qualls, Anthlon Bell, Dusty Hannahs, and Ky Madden, it’s easy to see why Zimm was kept around by Mike for all these years. He gets results from players on the court, and he does a great job dealing with the media.

But he’s not a recruiter, and that’s the thing that has plagued Arkansas this year. Arkansas is bringing in just their 2nd top 25 class in Anderson’s time at Arkansas, and the lack of depth after 2015’s starting 5 were gone made for a rough overall season in 2016. Arkansas missed out on KeVaughn Allen and Malik Monk, and fans were wanting to change things up.

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Which is why I’m surprised by the move to bring in Scotty Thurman, someone already on staff, to replace Zimmerman. I was half expecting Anderson to make a move to replace T.J. Cleveland, honestly. Cleveland has been with Anderson for a long time, and is the guy out there doing the recruiting with Mike. If recruiting is the biggest issue at Arkansas, then I don’t understand A) replacing a coach who wasn’t responsible for recruiting with B) a guy that’s never recruited before.

Not only has Thurman never recruited before, but he’s never coached before either. Which is crazy to me that you’d replace a guy that has 14 years of experience in your system, that has shown to be good at developing players within that system, for someone who has none of those proven skills.

More razorbacks: The 2015 Recruiting Class No Longer Exists

Scotty Thurman could provide a boost to Arkansas recruiting, maybe. We honestly don’t know. But I think that his hiring highlights a major issue with not only Coach Anderson, but with Hog fans in general. 1994 was 22 years ago. There are guys playing in the NBA that weren’t alive when Thurman was relevant as a player. His championship ring will certainly be worn to recruit’s houses when he visits, but what does it really provide, other than a fix of nostalgia for the fans who aren’t being recruited to play in Bud Walton?

Mike Anderson has forgotten more about being a coach than I’ll ever know. But so has Matt Zimmerman. And in a year that is make-or-break for Mike Anderson, it seems odd to me that he would replace a staff veteran who specializes in fundamentals and up-tempo basketball with an unproven former player.

I don’t want it to sound like I’m rooting for Thurman to fail. I’m certainly not. I want him to be the next Mike Anderson. The former player who comes onto the staff and shines. I’m just skeptical that it was the right move. If you want to replace a non-recruiting coach with a recruiter, then you should do that. But that isn’t what happened. Thurman can’t be called a recruiter because he’s never recruited before. And I don’t believe for a second that Thurman is, right now, as good of a coach as Zimmerman is. Mostly because he’s never been one before.

I’d love to be proven wrong about this. I’d love to take some crow and grill it up with a side of wrong and a bottle of i-told-you-so. But until that happens, I’m going to be skeptical that this was the right move. The Razorbacks could probably use a nice shakeup on staff. I just don’t know if they shook up the right parts.