Anderson will stay with Missouri

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Missouri men’s basketball coach Mike Anderson passed up a sizable raise offered by Georgia to instead sign a new seven-year contract with the school he helped lead to the brink of the Final Four.

The announcement Tuesday night caps a whirlwind couple of days for the university and for Anderson, who had also been linked to the coaching vacancy at Memphis created by John Calipari’s move to Kentucky.

The university said financial details of the new deal will be announced later. Anderson, who was hired in 2006, previously earned a base annual salary of $850,000.

“We are excited Coach Anderson is going to be at the University of Missouri for a long time,” athletics director Mike Alden said. “He’s done a tremendous job rebuilding our basketball tradition and is poised to lead our program to new heights in the coming years.”

A person familiar with the contract negotiations who requested anonymity to avoid contradicting the university’s public statement said that Anderson will earn a base salary of $1.3 million. Anderson’s Missouri predecessor, former Duke assistant Quin Snyder, earned a base salary of $1.015 million before he was fired three years ago.

The deal comes after Georgia reportedly discussed paying Anderson a base salary more than $2 million a year, according to a person with knowledge of the offer.

“We hired a coach who probably left $700,000 on the table,” Missouri curator Don Walsworth said. “We have a proven coach who has appeal to the citizens of Missouri. He’s all about honesty and integrity.”

In his third year with the Tigers, Anderson led a team picked by his coaching colleagues to finish seventh in the Big 12 Conference to a school-record 31 wins, the Big 12 tournament title and its first NCAA tournament appearance since 2003. The Tigers advanced to the West Regional final before losing to UConn.