There was a plethora of basketball to view over the weekend, if that’s your thing. I watched a little of it on Friday night, switching over from the SEC to the Big 12 to the Big East, which was UConn playing Syracuse. It went into overtime and the Huskies came out on top behind the great Kemba Walker, who led his team to the tournament championship over Louisville. How good is the Big East anyway? My buddy Judge Morley probably put it best when he said they are to basketball what the SEC is to football.
Speaking of SEC football, we are less than six months away from the opening Saturday, 169 days to be exact. Until then we will have to endure those other sports like March Madness, The Masters, the NBA Finals, Wimbledon and the Kentucky Derby, to name just a few.
Well the Hogs are coach hunting; at least they were on Monday when this was being written. The smart money, if there is such a thing in the coaching merry-go-round, is Mike Anderson. That would be great with me; in fact I hope he’s the guy they land. My second choices are either Coach K or Bill Self. Perhaps the best idea is to make Rob Evans the interim head coach until the day after the BCS National Championship game and then turn it over to Petrino. Just an idea.
There are lots of opinions about who the next coach ought to be. Some say bring back Nolan. Others disagree. My friend Kyle Mooty of the Madison County Record and White River Valley News is one of the latter. In Kyle’s column, “Moot Points,” he reminded us that it was way back in 1996 when Arkansas last won at least two NCAA tournament games. We beat Penn State and then Marquette before John Calipari’s UMass team beat us in the Sweet 16.
The year before that we played in the National Champ-ionship game against UCLA, when the other two teams in the Final Four were North Carolina and Oklahoma State. We handled the Tar Heels and the Bruins knocked out the Cowboys and head coach Eddie Sutton, who had been there 17 years earlier as the Hog mastermind.
One thing I remember well about that year’s tournament was when Missouri played UCLA in the second round. UCLA had a pretty good point guard named Tyus Edney.
Tom Friend of “The New York Times” described what happened at the end of that game.
“U.C.L.A.’s Tyus Edney ran a 94-foot dash in 4.7 seconds today. The No. 1-seeded Bruins trailed the No. 8-seeded Tigers by 1 point with 4.8 seconds remaining when Edney, a turbo point guard, started his cross-country journey. He took the inbounds pass under his own basket, was neck-and-neck with defender Jason Sutherland at midcourt, freed himself with a behind-the-back dribble, made a hairpin turn to the lane and banked in a shot over 6-foot-9-inch Derek Grimm at the buzzer.”
UCLA won the game 75-74 and two weeks later the Bruins cut down the nets after beating the Razorbacks 89-78. Thanks Missouri.
Arkansas was the second seed in the Midwest that year behind Kansas. We opened against Texas Southern and it almost became the third time a 15 beat a 2. But we held on to win by one. The previous two times that big upset happened were in 1991 when No. 15 Richmond beat No. 2 Syracuse 73-69, and then in 1993 when No. 15 Santa Clara beat No. 2 Arizona 64-61. And it has happened twice since, in 1997 No. 15 Coppin State beat No. 2 USC 78-65 and in 2001 No. 15 Hampton beat No. 2 Iowa State 58-57.
After throttling Texas Southern we played the No. 7 seed, Syracuse. I will always love the Orangemen’s Lawrence Moten from that team. The reason is this. With 6.5 seconds to play in regulation and with Syracuse ahead, 82-81, Arkansas called a timeout and set up a play for the potential winning score.
But Orangemen forward Lucious Jackson crept down the baseline and swiped the inbounds pass, and, in doing so, sprawled across the floor. He was tied up by Arkansas. Possession arrow to Syracuse with 4.3 seconds left. But wait. The officials ruled that Moten, the Orangemen’s co-captain and the Big East’s all-time leading scorer, pulled a Chris Webber and called a timeout during that pileup when his team had none left; technical on them. So Scotty Thurman made a free throw to put the game into OT, where we won 96-94.
The next game against archrival Memphis also saw the teams tied at the end. We won 96-91 and then beat Virginia in the Elite Eight and North Carolina in the semi to make it back to the National Championship game.
I don’t know why my wife claims I’m living in the past.