Jenna Isaacson photo

Missouri basketball Coach Mike Anderson meets Antlers, from left, Kyle Morris, Ben Kite, Dud Lawson and Jason Lewis on Tuesday at Mizzou Arena. Anderson has been traveling around the state trying to spread good will for the athletic department.

Mike Anderson’s contract states that he must make at least 30 public appearances per year. Ten weeks into his job as Missouri’s basketball coach, Anderson is closing in on that quota.

On Tuesday night, Mizzou Arena was the latest stop on the Anderson goodwill tour across Missouri. About 100 people attended a reception. Anderson greeted fans and told an already familiar story about his first encounter with the Antlers during his days as an assistant coach with the Arkansas Razorbacks - the MU fan group made a good first impression that day by brandishing a severed hog’s head on a stick.

Anderson promised a bright future for an MU team that finished with a 12-16 record last season.

"We will win a national championship," Anderson told the crowd. "I can’t tell you the date."

By the calculation of MU basketball spokesman Dave Reiter, Anderson has averaged two public appearances a week since his hiring on March 26. When Reiter was planning Anderson’s schedule, he asked the coach which golf tournaments and fan rallies he wanted to attend. Anderson said he would hit all of them.

"I’m a people person," he said. "Two things I’ve talked about are relationships and communication."

This is what new coaches do, and there are five of them in the Big 12. But at Missouri, the need to reconnect with fans is a little more urgent, considering the bizarre circumstances Anderson stepped into in Columbia.

To review, Athletic Director Mike Alden’s relationship with former Coach Quin Snyder deteriorated to the degree that by last season, the two rarely spoke. In February, Alden used a go-between, broadcaster Gary Link, to remind Snyder that he should think about resigning. Snyder complied. But conflicting stories about who suggested what to whom led to confusion and two internal investigations.

Many fans were outraged that Alden hadn’t handled Snyder’s termination personally or explained it adequately. University of Missouri President Elson Floyd and some members of the Board of Curators weren’t thrilled about being dragged into another athletic department mess.

An additional public mud fight erupted when Alden disregarded the advice of the majority of his search committee, who wanted to interview Bob Huggins for the coaching job. Alden eventually found his man in Anderson, but on the day Anderson was to be introduced, the press conference was delayed while the curators decided whether to fire Alden.

Ultimately, Alden kept his job. The task since then has been mending the wounds of the civil war.

"I don’t think there’s any magic to that," Alden said after Tuesday night’s reception. "You just do what we’re doing right now, not only with Mike but with all of us - just going back out, communicating, listening to people’s concerns, trying to address those, trying to ensure that we keep our message consistent."

There was some debate about whether fans would express their displeasure about the athletic department with their wallets, thus negating Alden’s strengths as a fundraiser. Alden said that hasn’t been the case.

"We’ve not seen any significant movement either way in our donation level," he said.

In many ways, it has been a successful school year for the athletic department. Although the Tigers failed to win a Big 12 championship in any sport for the ninth straight year, the volleyball team made the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament, the football team pulled off the greatest comeback in MU history to win the Independence Bowl, Ben Askren won the school’s first national wrestling title and the baseball team advanced to an NCAA super regional for the first time since the current playoff format was adopted in 1999.

Anderson has helped inspire Tiger nation. He took some hits when junior college transfer Ty Morrison reneged on a letter of intent to Missouri and leading scorer Thomas Gardner signed with an agent, but Anderson finished the recruiting season with a flurry, outmaneuvering Huggins for juco All-American point guard Stefhon Hannah.

With so many Big 12 Conference programs reeling from coaching changes and defections to the NBA, Anderson’s first team should be more competitive in the conference than Snyder’s final squad, which finished 11th in the league with a 5-11 mark.

As for Alden, who is under contract through 2010, he says his brush with dismissal on March 26 hasn’t caused him to reconsider whether he wants to stay at Missouri for the long haul.

"If we’ve got issues or we’ve made some mistakes or whatever, we need to get those corrected, and we’re going to do that," he said. "As far as affecting our passion for Mizzou and our love for the institution, I’ve got to tell you, that while those times were very challenging, it hasn’t diminished our commitment to the institution, our commitment to Columbia and our passion for what we’re doing."