COLUMBIA, MO. • New Missouri offensive coordinator Derek Dooley is a big fan of Missouri basketball coach Cuonzo Martin.
He has been for years, since the two overlapped as head coaches at Tennessee. Dooley was the Vols head coach from 2010 to 2012. Martin was UT’s head basketball coach from 2011 to 2014.
“They ran us both out at the same time,” Dooley quipped Tuesday after his first spring practice as the boss of Mizzou’s offense.
Technically, Tennessee didn’t fire Martin like it did Dooley late in the 2012 season. Martin left Knoxville for Cal-Berkeley less than two years later, not long after more than 35,000 Vols fans signed a petition calling for the school to dump him for former coach Bruce Pearl.