The Missouri Tigers coaching search continues and, as some predicted, it appears Purdue's Matt Painter is the No. 1 target. The KC Star's Mike DeArmond suggested that would be the case last week shortly after Mike Anderson left for the Arkansas Razorbacks and the Purdue Rivals.com site also reported Painter appeared to be the top target.
Vahe Gregorian of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Mizzou is expected to meet directly with Painter soon. Per the report, an answer is expected on Wednesday.
Painter has financial reasons to be interested in Missouri. The Tigers were reportedly willing to bump Anderson's salary to $2 million per year so if they'll do the same for Painter that would be a sizable increase over his current salary which pays him about $1.3 million per year (and a couple hundred thousand more in incentives).
For now, we wait once again. We've only got smoke on the Painter-to-Missouri story so we'll see if any fire comes up in the next few days.