Anderson eager to improve on inaugural season

~ The Tigers lost to Baylor in the Big 12 tournament last year.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A glance at the Missouri basketball team's 14-man roster shows a mix of high-scoring guards, lunch-pail forwards and 3-point shooting combo players.

But as the Tigers prepare to officially start practice Friday, it's the glaring absence from that roster -- a traditional center -- that could define the 2007-08 season.

The leading rebounder from last season's team, 6-foot-9 starting forward Kalen Grimes, was kicked off the team over the summer after his arrest in St. Louis County on felony assault charges.

Grimes was hardly an offensive force, averaging seven points a game, but his 260-pound frame at least ensured a defensive presence under the basket.

Now, coach Mike Anderson will have to make do with an undersized roster that returns five seniors and 11 players overall and features one key addition -- his nephew DeMarre Carroll, a transfer from Vanderbilt who sat out last season.

"We're not one of the bigger teams," Anderson said Wednesday at a season-opening news conference. "But there's different ways to skin a cat."

Entering his second year in Columbia, Anderson stopped short of promising a trip to the postseason, which eluded Missouri after an 18-12 finish in his first year.

Yet after advancing to the NCAA tournament in three of his four seasons at Alabama-Birmingham, and winning a national championship in 1994 as Nolan Richardson's top assistant at Arkansas, Anderson clearly has the tournament in his sights.

"Year one went OK," he said. "I like to be doing things in March, not sitting at home watching guys play."

In addition to the challenge of replacing Grimes, Missouri faces a tougher early season schedule, highlighted by back-to-back road trips in early December to Arkansas and California. The Tigers also could play with Michigan State, Maryland and UCLA at the four-team College Basketball Experience tournament Nov. 19 to 20 at the new Sprint Center in Kansas City.

To get there, Missouri must first beat Central Michigan in its Nov. 12 season opener at Mizzou Arena, then one night later beat the winner of Fordham-Central Missouri.

The other three powerhouse programs expected in Kansas City host similar regional events on their home courts.

Anderson said he wants team rebounding to improve, and singled out forwards Leo Lyons and Marshall Brown and guard Keon Lawrence.

Lawrence, a 6-foot-2 sophomore from Newark, N.J., welcomes the coach's challenge.

"We can't expect one big man to get all the rebounds," he said. "There's got to be more guards in there rebounding. We're littler, way littler."

At the same time, Grimes' absence creates more opportunities for the Tigers to run the floor on offense, Lawrence said. With a full-court pressure defense, he envisions a return to the "40 minutes of hell" style Anderson helped create at Arkansas -- though the Missouri coach on Wednesday said the program's new slogan is "Fast Forward."

"In some sense it's going to kind of hurt us not to have a true center, but now, everybody on the team can dribble," Lawrence said. "We can spread the floor more, we don't have to have somebody just standing down in the paint."

Carroll, who averaged 10.9 points and 6.4 rebounds as a sophomore in the rugged Southeastern Conference, said he expects to immediately step in as a leader on his new team, on and off the court.

"I'm going to lead by example," he said.

Anderson said he still has a bitter taste in his mouth from the Tigers' final game, a 14-point loss to 11th-seeded Baylor in the first-round of the Big 12 Conference tournament. He would like nothing better than a deep run in the 2008 conference tournament, which also will be held at the new arena in nearby Kansas City.

"We're going to be in the hunt for something," Anderson said. "I don't know what, but we are."