Gotta love the quotes in this story...
arkansas.rivals.com
FAYETTEVILLE -- Two and a half months after losing its fifth game in six tries and dropping to 0-3 in SEC play, Arkansas will play in its second straight Sweet 16.
The Razorbacks got past a pair of double-digit seeds in Vermont and New Mexico State and will now face No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga in San Francisco with a chance to make it back to the Elite Eight.
It’s a position very few expected them to be in after disappointing losses to Hofstra and Vanderbilt. In fact, after losing to Texas A&M to fall to 10-5 overall, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi didn’t even have Arkansas in his “next four out” for the 2022 NCAA Tournament.
“I would say it's great, especially because how we started this year or started our SEC play,” Jaylin Williams said after Saturday’s win. “It's great for the team knowing that we proved a lot of people wrong.
“This whole season for us, it's just been fighting. Everybody just kept fighting, everybody turned into a dog, everybody wanted it bad, so we just kept fighting throughout the whole year.”
That has become a staple of Eric Musselman’s teams at Arkansas.
In his first season, the Razorbacks lost five straight games in February before winning four of their last six to put themselves back in the bubble conversation prior to the pandemic shutting things down.
Last year, Arkansas followed a 2-4 start to conference play — which included back-to-back blowouts at LSU and Alabama — with 11 straight SEC wins to end the regular season. It just about replicated that this year, winning 14 of its final 16 games before the conference tournament despite facing a brutal schedule over the back half of SEC play.
“We were really, really challenged at the end of the year with arguably — and it wasn’t my words — we had as difficult a schedule as anybody in college basketball down the stretch,” Musselman said. “We were able to play as well as anybody down the stretch, so I think it’s a big-time credit to our players that they continue to get better.”
Making the nearly identical turnarounds — which earned them a 3 and 4 seed in the Big Dance, respectively — even more impressive is the fact that Arkansas underwent a significant roster change over the offseason.
Moses Moody, Justin Smith and Jalen Tate are gone, and Stanley Umude, Au’Diese Toney, Trey Wade and Chris Lykes have stepped in. A handful of key players — JD Notae, Williams and Davonte Davis — remain, but the main constant has been Musselman.
“He has the passion that we all do,” Lykes said. “He wants to win just as bad as we do and that's important coming from your coach, seeing how much he cares. That helps you go out there and you're motivated to fight for him.”
That passion — or “fire,” as Williams described it — rubs off on the players and has likely been a major contributing factor in Arkansas getting its last two seasons back on track.
“He pushes everybody to be just as good as they can be,” Williams said. “He might cuss you out, might yell at you, but it's because he wants you to be the best player that you can be. He is pushing you to be a perfectionist. He is pushing the team to be the best we can be every day.”
In addition to being great with Xs and Os, Musselman is also an animated coach. From needing to be restrained following an ejection against Oklahoma to taking his shirt off to celebrate an upset win over No. 1 Auburn, he doesn’t try to hold in his emotions.
On the court, that has translated to a team that gives maximum effort on the defensive end of the floor. The Razorbacks are 14th nationally in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency ratings and that was on display Saturday, when they held New Mexico State to just 48 points and Toney smothered Teddy Allen.
“We pride ourselves on toughness, too,” Musselman said. “Maybe some people overlook that part of us, but we feel like from a toughness standpoint that we can go toe-to-toe (with anyone).”
Nicknamed “The Importer” by national college basketball insider Jon Rothstein because of his success with the transfer portal, Musselman has melded his aforementioned newcomers and returning players.
It took some time for the group to mesh and for him to figure out the right combinations, but the Razorbacks are now following through on what Musselman told the likes of Umude and Toney during the recruiting process.
“The transfers, we talked to them about this — you know, this is the goal,” Musselman said. “If you want to come here, there's going to be expectations, but we have enough talent to do this, and I'm just so happy for the guys that haven't been on this stage because they committed to us with a dream and a vision.”
For Toney, this has been the first winning team he’s every been a part of and he’s soaking up the opportunity to play in his first NCAA Tournament.
“The Sweet 16 is big for my first time,” Toney said. “It's amazing just knowing that the guys we have and the culture we built is just crazy here, and it's just amazing to survive in this event.”
Although Lykes made it once before at Miami, the Hurricanes were bounced in the first round in an 11-6 upset at the hands of Loyola-Chicago.
“This is my first time getting past the first round, so I'm super excited about that,” Lykes said. “Just shows all the hard work we put in in this offseason, and just understanding the culture here and hard work and the ethics, so I'm happy to be here, man. It's a really surreal moment for me.”
Both of those transfers referenced the “culture” Musselman has developed in just three seasons as the Razorbacks’ head coach.
That’s a buzz word in college sports, but it must mean something at Arkansas because it has reached the Sweet 16 in consecutive seasons after going two and a half decades without making it out of the first weekend of the tournament.
“It's a culture of work,” Musselman said. “It's a culture of trying to get maximum effort every day, but to make two Sweet 16s back-to-back, it's not easy. There's very few teams that are able to do it.”
Making the Sweet 16 used to be expected for the Razorbacks. Over a 19-year stretch that spanned the tenures of Hall of Fame coaches Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson, Arkansas was one of the final 16 teams remaining 10 times — including four straight from 1993-96.
The Razorbacks of course won it all in 1994 and finished runner-up in 1995, but it’s been a struggle since then. Although it made the NCAA Tournament 10 times in the 25 years following its last Sweet 16 in 1996, Arkansas won just five games.
Musselman matched that mark in the only two NCAA Tournaments held since he was hired. With one more, he’d have Arkansas in back-to-back Elite Eights for just the fourth time in school history.
Most of that history happened well before the current Razorbacks were born, but they seem set on changing that for the next crop of players.
“It's a great feeling, but it's like a standard now for us,” Williams said. “I feel like the program, (this) is what we want to do, what we feel like we need to do every year. It's our standard to get to where we were last year, but of course, it is a great feeling knowing that we are one of the last teams standing.”
Standing between Arkansas and a return to the Elite Eight is a Gonzaga team appearing in its seventh straight Sweet 16. The Bulldogs were No. 1 in the final AP Poll and are No. 1 in virtually every advanced rating metric — KenPom, BartTorvik and ESPN’s BPI.
If they knock off Gonzaga, the Razorbacks would face either No. 9 Duke or No. 12 Texas Tech with a chance to reach the Final Four. They are the 2 and 3 seeds, respectively, in the bracket, as the West Regional is the only region that features all chalk in the Sweet 16.
“None of us want this to end,” Musselman said. “I mean, coaches, staff, players — we know our fans are having fun. I went and got my hair cut today and everyone was talking about the game Thursday. … There’s an incredible buzz.”
Tip off is scheduled for 6:09 p.m. CT Thursday and the game will be televised on CBS.
HawgBeat - Musselman sets new standard for Arkansas basketball
In just three years as head coach, Eric Musselman has changed the standard for Arkansas basketball.
arkansas.rivals.com
FAYETTEVILLE -- Two and a half months after losing its fifth game in six tries and dropping to 0-3 in SEC play, Arkansas will play in its second straight Sweet 16.
The Razorbacks got past a pair of double-digit seeds in Vermont and New Mexico State and will now face No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga in San Francisco with a chance to make it back to the Elite Eight.
It’s a position very few expected them to be in after disappointing losses to Hofstra and Vanderbilt. In fact, after losing to Texas A&M to fall to 10-5 overall, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi didn’t even have Arkansas in his “next four out” for the 2022 NCAA Tournament.
“I would say it's great, especially because how we started this year or started our SEC play,” Jaylin Williams said after Saturday’s win. “It's great for the team knowing that we proved a lot of people wrong.
“This whole season for us, it's just been fighting. Everybody just kept fighting, everybody turned into a dog, everybody wanted it bad, so we just kept fighting throughout the whole year.”
That has become a staple of Eric Musselman’s teams at Arkansas.
In his first season, the Razorbacks lost five straight games in February before winning four of their last six to put themselves back in the bubble conversation prior to the pandemic shutting things down.
Last year, Arkansas followed a 2-4 start to conference play — which included back-to-back blowouts at LSU and Alabama — with 11 straight SEC wins to end the regular season. It just about replicated that this year, winning 14 of its final 16 games before the conference tournament despite facing a brutal schedule over the back half of SEC play.
“We were really, really challenged at the end of the year with arguably — and it wasn’t my words — we had as difficult a schedule as anybody in college basketball down the stretch,” Musselman said. “We were able to play as well as anybody down the stretch, so I think it’s a big-time credit to our players that they continue to get better.”
Making the nearly identical turnarounds — which earned them a 3 and 4 seed in the Big Dance, respectively — even more impressive is the fact that Arkansas underwent a significant roster change over the offseason.
Moses Moody, Justin Smith and Jalen Tate are gone, and Stanley Umude, Au’Diese Toney, Trey Wade and Chris Lykes have stepped in. A handful of key players — JD Notae, Williams and Davonte Davis — remain, but the main constant has been Musselman.
“He has the passion that we all do,” Lykes said. “He wants to win just as bad as we do and that's important coming from your coach, seeing how much he cares. That helps you go out there and you're motivated to fight for him.”
That passion — or “fire,” as Williams described it — rubs off on the players and has likely been a major contributing factor in Arkansas getting its last two seasons back on track.
“He pushes everybody to be just as good as they can be,” Williams said. “He might cuss you out, might yell at you, but it's because he wants you to be the best player that you can be. He is pushing you to be a perfectionist. He is pushing the team to be the best we can be every day.”
In addition to being great with Xs and Os, Musselman is also an animated coach. From needing to be restrained following an ejection against Oklahoma to taking his shirt off to celebrate an upset win over No. 1 Auburn, he doesn’t try to hold in his emotions.
On the court, that has translated to a team that gives maximum effort on the defensive end of the floor. The Razorbacks are 14th nationally in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency ratings and that was on display Saturday, when they held New Mexico State to just 48 points and Toney smothered Teddy Allen.
“We pride ourselves on toughness, too,” Musselman said. “Maybe some people overlook that part of us, but we feel like from a toughness standpoint that we can go toe-to-toe (with anyone).”
Nicknamed “The Importer” by national college basketball insider Jon Rothstein because of his success with the transfer portal, Musselman has melded his aforementioned newcomers and returning players.
It took some time for the group to mesh and for him to figure out the right combinations, but the Razorbacks are now following through on what Musselman told the likes of Umude and Toney during the recruiting process.
“The transfers, we talked to them about this — you know, this is the goal,” Musselman said. “If you want to come here, there's going to be expectations, but we have enough talent to do this, and I'm just so happy for the guys that haven't been on this stage because they committed to us with a dream and a vision.”
For Toney, this has been the first winning team he’s every been a part of and he’s soaking up the opportunity to play in his first NCAA Tournament.
“The Sweet 16 is big for my first time,” Toney said. “It's amazing just knowing that the guys we have and the culture we built is just crazy here, and it's just amazing to survive in this event.”
Although Lykes made it once before at Miami, the Hurricanes were bounced in the first round in an 11-6 upset at the hands of Loyola-Chicago.
“This is my first time getting past the first round, so I'm super excited about that,” Lykes said. “Just shows all the hard work we put in in this offseason, and just understanding the culture here and hard work and the ethics, so I'm happy to be here, man. It's a really surreal moment for me.”
Both of those transfers referenced the “culture” Musselman has developed in just three seasons as the Razorbacks’ head coach.
That’s a buzz word in college sports, but it must mean something at Arkansas because it has reached the Sweet 16 in consecutive seasons after going two and a half decades without making it out of the first weekend of the tournament.
“It's a culture of work,” Musselman said. “It's a culture of trying to get maximum effort every day, but to make two Sweet 16s back-to-back, it's not easy. There's very few teams that are able to do it.”
Making the Sweet 16 used to be expected for the Razorbacks. Over a 19-year stretch that spanned the tenures of Hall of Fame coaches Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson, Arkansas was one of the final 16 teams remaining 10 times — including four straight from 1993-96.
The Razorbacks of course won it all in 1994 and finished runner-up in 1995, but it’s been a struggle since then. Although it made the NCAA Tournament 10 times in the 25 years following its last Sweet 16 in 1996, Arkansas won just five games.
Musselman matched that mark in the only two NCAA Tournaments held since he was hired. With one more, he’d have Arkansas in back-to-back Elite Eights for just the fourth time in school history.
Most of that history happened well before the current Razorbacks were born, but they seem set on changing that for the next crop of players.
“It's a great feeling, but it's like a standard now for us,” Williams said. “I feel like the program, (this) is what we want to do, what we feel like we need to do every year. It's our standard to get to where we were last year, but of course, it is a great feeling knowing that we are one of the last teams standing.”
Standing between Arkansas and a return to the Elite Eight is a Gonzaga team appearing in its seventh straight Sweet 16. The Bulldogs were No. 1 in the final AP Poll and are No. 1 in virtually every advanced rating metric — KenPom, BartTorvik and ESPN’s BPI.
If they knock off Gonzaga, the Razorbacks would face either No. 9 Duke or No. 12 Texas Tech with a chance to reach the Final Four. They are the 2 and 3 seeds, respectively, in the bracket, as the West Regional is the only region that features all chalk in the Sweet 16.
“None of us want this to end,” Musselman said. “I mean, coaches, staff, players — we know our fans are having fun. I went and got my hair cut today and everyone was talking about the game Thursday. … There’s an incredible buzz.”
Tip off is scheduled for 6:09 p.m. CT Thursday and the game will be televised on CBS.
