OKLAHOMA CITY | Everyone felt emotional. Well, it was an emotional moment. A year ago, no one was entirely sure if Missouri basketball coach Mike Anderson could even save his program. He had to suspend five players after a fight. He had to dismiss his leading rebounder and later his leading scorer because of off-the-court problems. He had to grab hold and stand up and establish what he wanted his program to represent.</p><p>And now, here they were one year later, the Missouri Tigers, cutting down the nets, celebrating their first-ever Big 12 tournament championship. Sure, athletic director Mike Alden admitted to crying a bit. Sure, Marcheita Anderson, wife of Mike, broke down in tears. Sure, Mike Anderson himself stood on the court, confetti on his jacket, pride in his eyes, and he said: &#8220;It hasn&#8217;t hit me yet. But it&#8217;s special. It&#8217;s really special.&#8221;</p><p>You could pick anyone &#8212; anyone on the court after the Tigers beat Baylor 73-60 Saturday evening in the Big 12 title game &#8212; and tell a story. You could tell a story about Mike Alden, who almost lost his job the day he hired Anderson to be coach. Alden admitted that, at the lowest moment, he was not entirely sure that things would work out. &#8220;I think that if you&#8217;re human, you have to wonder,&#8221; he says. &#8220;You have to think, &#8216;Will it all come together?&#8217; Anyone who says, &#8216;No question, it will all work out,&#8217; is fooling himself. That&#8217;s what makes this so special. That&#8217;s what makes it so emotional.&#8221;</p><p>You could tell a story about Anderson, the coach who fought to save his program, who stuck to his full-court style, who believed this team had a chance. When the season began, the Tigers were picked to finish seventh. Anderson was picked as a coach on the hot seat. For it to end here, well, it&#8217;s extraordinary.</p><p>You could pick any number of players &#8212; Zaire Taylor, Leo Lyons, Matt Lawrence &#8212; who went through the worst of college basketball and somehow ended up here.</p><p>But maybe the best story on the floor also happened to be the tournament&#8217;s most valuable player. DeMarre Carroll is every myth about college basketball come to life. Good player? Yeah, he made himself into a first-team All-Big 12 player, though he doesn&#8217;t have great size (he&#8217;s listed at 6 feet 8) and he does not exactly have the NBA scouts drooling. NBADraft.net, among others, does not project him getting drafted at all.</p><p>Good student? Yeah, he made the conference&#8217;s all-academic team, and he has already graduated from Missouri.</p><p>Good leader? Yeah, freshman Kim English&#8217;s father, Kim Sr., came up to Carroll before Saturday&#8217;s game and asked him to have a good game because, as he said, &#8220;My son looks up to you.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;He&#8217;s the ultimate warrior,&#8221; Anderson says.</p><p>But even more, he has the ultimate Missouri story. He summed it up sweetly and even poetically after the game on Saturday.</p><p>He said: &#8220;I got shot. We lost a lot of games. And so on. Look at me now.&#8221;</p><p>Yes, that does sum up things. Carroll, as you no doubt know, is the nephew of Mike Anderson. He was doing very well at Vanderbilt, and he liked it there quite a lot, but he transferred to Missouri to help his uncle establish the program. And not long after he arrived, he went to a downtown nightclub late one night &#8212; police would say he went to break up a fight &#8212; and he ended up getting shot. The bullet landed perilously close to his Achilles&#8217;, which no doubt would have ended his career. As it was, the incident made him wonder if he had made a terrible mistake coming to Missouri. All of the things that followed made him ponder that question again and again and again. Every other day, it seemed like there was another suspension, another controversy. And, as he said, the Tigers lost a lot of games.