FAYETTEVILLE — Firing Mike Anderson was not only the first major personnel decision of Hunter Yurachek’s tenure as Arkansas’ athletics director, but it was also probably the most difficult decision of his professional career.

Meeting with the media Monday for the first time since ending Anderson’s eight-year run as head coach nearly two weeks earlier, Yurachek provided some insight on the process.

Shortly after Arkansas was eliminated from the NIT, Anderson received a list of topics to be discussed in a meeting between him, Yurachek, men’s basketball sport administrator Jon Fagg and the rest of the basketball support administration on Monday, March 25, at The Blessings Golf Club.

During that meeting, Yurachek said that he would have liked to see more of a vision for the program moving forward than what Anderson showed. The second-year A.D. also did not believe he had achieved the level of success expected at a school like Arkansas.

“This should be a team that is top two or three in the SEC year in and year out, and one that’s in the top 20 year in and year out,” Yurachek said. “We hadn’t met that consistently over the past eight years.”

It wasn’t until he laid down in bed that night, though, that Yurachek made up his mind.

Anderson never had a losing season, took the Razorbacks to the NCAA Tournament three times in his final five years and had extensive ties to the program from his time as an assistant under legendary coach Nolan Richardson.

Multiple times during the press conference, Yurachek described him as a “great man,” which made it even tougher and ultimately led to him deciding not to hold a press conference. It is believed to be the first time the sitting A.D. at Arkansas has not met with the media following the firing of a head football or men’s basketball coach.

“I didn’t think I needed to compound or shed any negative light on Mike Anderson by having a press conference after I let him go,” Yurachek said. “I didn’t see the point in that. The only thing that was going to come on that was negative things toward Mike and how he ran his program.”

For the most part, Anderson ran a clean program off the court. He helped raise the team’s APR well above the NCAA benchmark and did not get the Razorbacks tangled up in the shoe company scandal that rocked the college basketball landscape this season.

However, that was not enough to save his job. Anderson was called into the A.D.’s office the next day and delivered the news face-to-face. Yurachek said he “handled it with the utmost class.”

“I told him the day I let him go, ‘This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, Mike, because you and I stand for so many of the same values in our lives and what we want to happen for these young men off the basketball court,’” Yurachek said. “But ultimately what happens on the basketball court, as an athletic director, is how I have to evaluate our program moving forward.”

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