“Dark night and bright future” is the title of a song of late legendary country star Dolly Parton, but it adequately describes the state of Tennessee Tech’s basketball program at the end of the John Pelphrey era, which came to an unceremonious and abrupt end last March after the Golden Eagles failed to qualify for the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.
Tobin Anderson, who was hired back in the spring while he was still employed at South Florida as the associate head coach under Bryan Hodgson, as the Bulls
won American Conference regular-season and tournament to qualify for March Madness, is absolutely the right fit to try to revive a program that has seemingly been lifeless for a very long time.
So lifeless last season that it was time for a change, as the Golden Eagles brass needed to find a vibe shift with the Golden Eagles set to take on a new challenge in a new mid-major league in 2026-27, as Tennessee Tech became the newest member of the SoCon after a 77-year membership in the OVC.
The vibe needed to be different in Cookeville, and the match had to be the fit the program had missed with Pelphrey. It had to be a coach who was motivated to do something that hadn’t been done in a long time and one that relished the opportunity to do just that—create a legacy built on a foundation that is sustainable if everything else around a mid-major program in the new NIL era is not.
Vibe Change
Good basketball coaches are remembered by the programs they lead and the eras in which they lead them. Great basketball coaches are known by the legacies they leave at the program they leave and even the conference they coach in.
A big part of that is the culture they instill and the exciting vibe that they create. That positivity can be infectious, but if the wrong hire is made, it can also be infecting. Not that Pelphrey infected the culture to a large negative degree, the fact is there was no culture to infect in many ways, and that’s even worse.
There’s a new twist that athletic directors must look for in a coaches background, which is the ability to sustain a winning culture from year-to-year completely detached from the production you retain or often, lose.
People remember Stephen Curry’s coach was the mastermind, Bob McKillop. Folks know about Mike Young and his sharpshooter Fletcher Magee, or that Steve Forbes won 30 games in 2019-20 and won a pair of conference tournament titles, or that Mack McCarthy led a Chattanooga team that reached the Sweet 16 in 1997.
Folks also remember that Bucky McMillan revived Samford basketball and led it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 23 years, as he was hired from the high school ranks by Director of Athletics Martin Newton.
That next one we could be talking about 20 or 30 years down the road is Tennessee Tech’s Anderson, as he is the next in line to potentially leave his own legacy at Tennessee Tech, and he will be looking to lead the Golden Eagles to heights they haven’t reach in over six decades.
The thing is, we already know a lot about Anderson and the legacy he has already established for himself on the biggest of stages nationally in the NCAA Tournament. We all witnessed it with our own two eyes, as David took down Goliath.
There is nothing quite like the temptation of opportunity and a chance to make your mark and carve out your own unique legacy. With the right support system around you, anything is possible.
Anderson is the kind of guy you like before you meet him. I look forward to many of the interviews I conduct while covering mid-major basketball, but I was particularly eager to speak with Anderson.
He builds opportunities and creates legacies by good old-fashioned hard work and a positive energy that goes before him. If I am a high school senior or a redshirt senior in the portal, I don’t know how I’d overlook a coach like Anderson no matter who the other coaches were that wanted me to play for them.
So many of the other coaches I like have a similar track record to that of Anderson. Guys like former Michigan and West Virginia head coach John Belein and former ETSU coach Steve Forbes are a lot like Anderson, starting at the very grass roots and smallest levels of the sport to incrementally, step-by-step reaching a higher level.
Anderson is now progressing all the way to the mid-major level of college basketball after coaching at nearly every rung on the ladder below where he is currently.
An upset for the ages and a March Madness legacy moment
The thing is, we already know a lot about Anderson and the legacy he has already established for himself on the biggest of stages nationally in the NCAA Tournament. We all saw it with our own eyes, and it was something we all smiled about when No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson took down Zach Edey and top-seeded Purdue in the 2023 NCAA Tournament.
That win not only helped the country learn who Anderson was, it more importantly gave college basketball fans a new cognitive marker in their brains for Fairleigh Dickinson alongside UMBC, as the two are the only 16s to ever knock off a No. 1 seed in the men’s NCAA Tournament.
Making FDU’s upset of Purdue in the NCAA Tournament even more remarkable was the fact that Purdue Boilermakers were the biggest team in the country, while the Knights were the smallest. You can’t script this kind of stuff…It was literally another David vs. Goliath moment.
“You can’t replicate something like that,” Anderson in a phone interview back in late August. “I think part of it is when you’ve been at Division III and small colleges and you’ve put your whole life into it as a coach and you watch the NCAA Tournament and you watch March Madness and the first-round games and usually you’re in college at like the local sports bar and you’re in college with a bunch of buddies and now all the sudden you’re the lead story and you’re the big upset and I think it was so awesome from just that standpoint.”
It was certainly a surreal moment for him, but in what he said you also get the feel that Anderson is just one of us. One of those guys that like the rest of us watches the game at the local sports bar with a group of friends and cheers on David against Goliath. That quote engages us and the reason why he resonates with the American sports fan and it’s what will no doubt make him popular among SoCon basketball fans right away.
Anderson appears eager to make his mark in both the SoCon and as the new leader of Tennessee Tech basketball and potentially become the league’s next big-time coach to carry the mid-major and SoCon torch at an even higher level of NCAA Division I College Basketball. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves too far in the future, as the task at hand won’t be an easy one, but it’s one right in the wheelhouse of Anderson and his strength as a head coach.
Right now it’s just about getting back to the opportunity before him and a chance to be a Division-I head coach, but it is interesting that Anderson got a chance to step back for a season and learn from another great teacher, in Hodgson at South Florida.
Hodgson, who is now the new head coach leading Providence after the Kim English debacle, celebrated Anderson’s opportunity on social media last season when it was learned that Anderson would be the new coach leading the Tennessee Tech basketball program.
I asked coach Anderson about what he learned from the unique perspective he had last season coaching South Florida to a Conference USA title and an NCAA Tournament appearance.
“It was great for me because when you’ve been a head coach since I think I was 27 so it’s been 24 years now…it’s hard…when you’re in charge it’s hard to kind of um….well you’ve done things how you’ve done them and you have your own set routine,” Anderson said. “You might tweak things here or there. For me it was good because I learned ways to do things differently than I had previously on some different things, and I mean like offensively…there’s a lot of things I learned from him and his staff that are going to help me here [Tennessee Tech]. He came from Alabama so he brought a lot of Alabama stuff, and so it’s almost like you went for a year and immersed yourself in his style. I learned it all, and I can take what I liked from some of the stuff I learned and add that to what we already do.”
The Challenge Ahead
The last time the Golden Eagles took the floor, they were to end the season on a sour note on the final day of February, as Tennessee Tech dropped an 89-73 contest on the road in Cape Girardeau, Mo., to SEMO.
The Golden Eagles finished in a tie with Eastern Illinois in the OVC Standings; however, the Panthers held the tiebreaker in the head-to-head against the Golden Eagles, and therefore would be the final team included in the eight-team OVC tournament field instead of Tennessee Tech.
Three days after the 16-point loss to end a 13-18 season, the Golden Eagles decided it was time for a change in leadership, and 10 days later, the administration, led by Director of Athletics Casey Fox, had their guy, the charismatic Anderson.
Anderson and Tennessee Tech both have a chance to start over in a new league and create their own/new legacy the way they want to. Anderson is used to leading programs with little or no success on the college basketball hardwood, as anyone who knows or follows college basketball can tell you how he revitalized the energy and created history during his time leading the Fairleigh Dickinson program.
With that said, during each of his Division-I stops at Iona and FDU, as well as prior to becoming a Division-I head coach during at very successful Division-II St. Thomas Aquinas, where he posted a record of 209-62 from 2013-22, Anderson’s primary strength was that he was an outstanding recruiter.
As we have already witnessed in his short time at Tennessee Tech, Anderson has shown his abilities in that department once again, securing a very good portal class.
Following the upset of Purdue on St. Patrick’s Day 2023, Anderson was hired at Iona, where he spent just two seasons before getting unceremoniously fired as the program’s head coach after somehow not meeting expectations in two seasons. He posted a 33-34 record in two seasons at the helm in Ithaca.
Despite the lack of success, Tennessee Tech signed as talented of a portal class as anyone in the SoCon. That is shocking because the Golden Eagles have not made an NCAA Tournament appearance since 1963.
I asked coach Anderson what was neat about having the responsibility more from a fun aspect to do something that hadn’t been done in so long and less about being pressured to do it. There is a difference between the former and the latter.
“It’s a great challenge first of all,” he said with a laugh. “To do something that hasn’t been done…to reach the NCAA Tournament in 63 years or 61 years or one of those two so I’d say that’s been a long time and what a great challenge that is but it’s a great time to be at this school and from what Bobby’s [Wilder] done with the football team and just the whole place in general from the people in administration to the people on campus and just the university as a whole…Athletics are a big part of this place and something that folks in this community care about. One thing that was so attractive about this job is that they are really committed into making this place successful in football and successful in basketball. So, it’s been awesome.
“There’s two kinds of jobs. That is you’ve got to start and kind of build it from where you are now, and there’s a place to come into where they’ve kind of already been winning for a long time. I like the former type of jobs rather than latter a lot more for me because we have a chance to kind of put our own spin on things and establish our own traditions and establish the foundation of what we’re trying to do here and make Tennessee Tech a great mid-major basketball program. What makes it great to be here is that there are a lot of people here that see that same vision too.”
Yet, on paper, the Golden Eagles have had a better portal haul and better overall recruiting class than either of their two Volunteer State peer programs, which are both much more decorated and tradition-laden than their brand-new conference rivals. That speaks volumes about the kind of coach that Tennessee Tech is getting in Anderson, as well as it also tells me that they are willing to spend on more than one sport, which is going to have to be a new way of life competing in a tougher conference than the one they came from.
While Tennessee Tech doesn’t have the tradition and pedigree that either Chattanooga or East Tennessee do on the hardwood, it has the ambition to build one under the leadership of Anderson. There is a new energy within the program, and we’ll see how it all unfolds in year one under Anderson.
Anderson also has some thoughts on the 5-for-5 eligibility concerns, as we get closer to the season with some players being eligible, while others still await an expedited court ruling less than two months out from the season.
“There has to be some kind of uniformity to all this,” Anderson said. “We go through the whole summer, and I am not going to just now change the roster at this point. I am not saying that’s wrong to do for everyone or whatever…If you have a spot open or there’s injuries that’s a completely different issue…But you shouldn’t be creating roster spots for guys that aren’t already there…All I am saying is that you can’t just have some guys eligible and some not is just ridiculous…There has to be some kind of uniformity in all of this.”
Folks are also going to enjoy Tennessee Tech’s style, as they play fast on offense and press almost the entire game on defense. It will be like watching the league’s newest version of Bucky Ball with Anderson’s own twist. The Golden Eagles will run more offensive sets and shoot fewer threes, but other than that will be very similar to the Bulldogs.
Having a guy like Anderson in the SoCon is something that, from a personal standpoint, I am really looking forward to. This league is home to some of the best coaches in mid-major basketball: Lennie Acuff (Samford), Bob Richey (Furman), Dan Earl (Chattanooga) and Brooks Savage (East Tennessee State) to name just a few.
The SoCon has been a stepping stone to a greater level for some like Steve Forbes (ETSU-to-Wake Forest), Mike Young (Wofford-to-Virginia Tech) and Wes Miller (UNCG-to Cincinnati), but it’s also proven to be a home conference for other great coaches like Bob McKillop (Davidson) and John Kresse (CofC), who could have easily left the league for bigger and better opportunities, but decided happiness and success were more valuable than making the move to power conference basketball.
Exactly where Anderson falls in that philosophy is anyone’s guess, but in talking with him, he seems more of a “builder” than a coach necessarily concerned with the next big move for him professionally.
Not every situation is Tennessee Tech’s, and the lure and challenge of building something special in Cookeville for the first time in a very long time is enough of a lure and challenge before worrying about the next move. That’s why I see it as being more likely for Anderson to stay put than to make an abrupt move should Tennessee Tech have some success in 2026-27.
If the Golden Eagles do succeed, you can expect some big schools in need of new leadership to give Anderson a hard look. Mostly because of what he’s done in a short time as a Division-I basketball coach.
A resume worthy of mention
The SoCon’s newest head coach has put in work, which has led him to Cookeville– just about 40 minutes outside the big city of Nashville and a place where dreams can come true in many different forms. Anderson has charted 444 wins at all divisions of NCAA basketball (Divisions I, II and III). The 2026-27 season will mark just his fourth at the Division-I level, as he holds a 54-50 record at the highest classification as a head coach.
He has spent time learning on the job at places like LeMoyne, Hamilton College, St. Thomas Aquinas College and Clarkson University long before reaching Division I.
Anderson has helped foster a culture of winning where there hasn’t previously been one. In fact, in one of the places that already had a great tradition in place–Iona–it could be argued he wasn’t given a fair chance, however, that experience led to a unique opportunity at South Florida to learn from a guy like Bryan Hodgson and see the picture from a different perspective.
Now he’s back in the ultimate leadership role, trying to bring a Tennessee Tech program to a Big Dance it hasn’t been invited to since 1963, but if there’s anyone who knows how to crash the biggest party in sports, it’s Anderson.
In his career of notable accomplishments, it’s likely few, if any, will match what he did with No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson, however, getting Tennessee Tech to an NCAA Tournament for the first time in 63 years would be right up there, and if he should win a game again, it would certainly be a comparable achievement.
Much like former ETSU head coach Steve Forbes, Anderson has charisma and the kind of personality that draws you in. The comparisons to Forbes don’t end there, as both were born in small towns in Iowa, with Forbes hailing from Lone Tree and Anderson from Truro.
Anderson is the exact kind of coach that the SoCon needs to continue its tradition of molding some of the brightest minds in the game, while helping sustain the league as one of the best mid-majors in the country. It’s not a question of if Anderson will turn things in Cookeville but just a matter of how long it will take.
