You can tell the search firm hired to consult on the Georgia men’s basketball coaching hire was doing its job when the headline on the AJC this morning read, “UGA coaching search remains a mystery”. Chasing planes, sketchy rumors of meetings in Atlanta that never happened…it was a frustrating Monday trying to nail down hard information on what was going on with the search. Meanwhile, Alabama has a coach, Virginia announced their new coach on Monday, and Kentucky made a move for John Calipari of Memphis seemingly overnight. Was Georgia, after all this time, going to be left out?

Now Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com reports that Georgia has indeed offered Missouri’s Mike Anderson a deal somewhere in the $2 million / year range. Missouri’s counteroffer was expected to be only around $1.3 million per season. According to Schlabach, “Anderson spoke to Georgia athletics director Damon Evans on Monday…and is back home pondering his future.”

Now the questions begin:

Will Anderson wait to see if Memphis offers?
Will Memphis, a Conference USA program riding high in an NBA market on the flashy style of Calipari, look instead to someone with NBA ties or with at least as large of a personality as Calipari?
Will Missouri be able to dig deep enough to match Georgia’s offer?

There’s still plenty of uncertainty, but at least we know now that Georgia has identified and put their best offer out to their top target. Now, we wait…

UPDATE: Of course even this story has to be challenged. According to the AJC and Anderson’s agent, there is no offer yet though Georgia is interested. You can parse the words if you like – is this an agent playing games? Have Anderson and his agent been given the terms of an offer but nothing formal on paper yet? Clearly there is some understanding of what the offer would look like. “Georgia appears to want to make a commitment to basketball and Damon probably has the most to offer,” admits Jimmy Sexton, Anderson’s agent.

On it goes…