FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas handled the basketball coaching search itself last week but has secured professional help the second time around.

The school announced Wednesday that it has hired Parker Executive Search of Atlanta for $ 90, 000 plus expenses.

All expenses will be paid with private funds from the Razorback Foundation, the athletic department’s fundraising partner.

Parker Executive Search helped deliver coaches for Indiana, Oklahoma and Arizona State last year, recently aided searches for Iowa and Minnesota and is helping Kentucky. Parker has been hired to find a president for the University of Missouri system at a cost of $ 125, 000, the Kansas City Star reported.

Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles fired Stan Heath on March 26 and conducted the search primarily himself with help from UA letterman and ESPN college basketball analyst Jimmy Dykes and sports information director Kevin Trainor.

Broyles hired Creighton’s Dana Altman. Altman abruptly quit Tuesday and returned to Creighton about 24 hours after being introduced as the new coach.

Five high-profile coaches rebuffed Arkansas last week. Broyles said Monday he came to realize that coaches at high-level programs are almost impossible to lure away.

If they’d known the process was going to turn out like it has, school officials would have hired a search firm last week, Chancellor John White said.

“My belief was, and I think Coach Broyles ’ belief was, that we had strong reasons to believe there were some individuals that had a great interest in being in this program, that we would have a great interest in attracting,” White said.

“Now we’ve had a hiccup and said, ‘OK, in that case, because there are likely to be all kinds of false perceptions now nationally about what’s going on at Arkansas, what caused this to occur, we’re going to [use ] a professional [firm ] that tells our story [to candidates ] and can tell it in ways that we are limited in our ability to do so publicly.”

White didn’t name names but it has been widely known that Texas A&M’s Billy Gillispie was the first coach Broyles pursued. It’s believed that Broyles had received favorable information from an intermediary about Gillispie’s potential interest in Arkansas, but when the job opened Gillispie never returned Broyles’ calls.

Gillispie never commented publicly on his name being linked to the job other than to say he never talked to Arkansas.

The candidate profile hasn’t changed. Arkansas still wants an experienced coach with a winning background and preferably an uptempo style of play, UA Chancellor John White said.

Coaches believed to be interested in the job include LSU’s John Brady, Denver Nuggets assistant Mike Dunlap, former Arkansas star Sidney Moncrief, Oklahoma State’s Sean Sutton, Oral Roberts’ Scott Sutton and Nebraska’s Doc Sadler.

Moncrief is coaching the NBA Development League’s Fort Worth, Texas, team and also has been an assistant for the Dallas Mavericks. His one college coaching experience ended in a four-victory season at UALR.

Sadler is a Greenwood native and UA graduate. Both Suttons are sons of former Arkansas Coach Eddie Sutton.

Others who could draw a look include Central Florida’s Kirk Speraw, former Stanford and NBA coach Mike Montgomery, Pittsburgh’s Jamie Dixon and New Mexico State’s Reggie Theus.

Speraw interviewed with Iowa and could be a candidate that Parker Executive Search presents to Arkansas, too. He has a 231-187 record in 14 seasons at UCF and has made it to the NCAA Tournament four times.

Montgomery went 547-244 from 1986-2004 at Stanford and then went to the Golden State Warriors for two years before being fired last August.

Theus, 49, has been a college head coach just two years but has revived New Mexico State. The Aggies went 25-9 and lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament this year.

Dixon has been a head coach only four years but has gone 105-30 during that time. He lettered for TCU from 1984-1987 and was a teammate of Little Rock native Dennis Nutt.

Arkansas will pay whatever it takes to hire the coach it wants, White and Broyles have said. No timetable has been set.

Parker Executive Search will screen candidates and eventually forward a “short list” to Arkansas. Broyles will choose a coach from that list and will get White’s approval, White said.

Using a search firm gives the school a better chance of the search being conducted out of the public eye, and the firm can move quickly because it has a database of candidates, White said.

Dan Parker, the firm’s president, will lead the search.

Parker was out of the office traveling with family and could not be reached for comment, a spokesman for the firm said.

Oklahoma Athletic Director Joe Castiglione gave Parker’s firm a resounding endorsement. He used Parker when he hired Jeff Capel as basketball coach last year.

“They’re outstanding — outstanding,” Castiglione said. “There are several in the business that have had varying degrees of success, but you won’t find one better than Parker.”

How involved a search firm becomes depends on what the university wants, Castiglione said. A school might already have a candidate list and ask the firm only to do background checks or the school could hand over the search and ask for finalists to be recommended like Arkansas has done.

Castiglione said he already had a list of candidates and mostly needed Parker to check them out and open discussions with them.

Search firms have experience hiring at all levels within universities, not just in athletics, and that familiarity with the campus culture and the school’s overall goals is helpful, Castiglione said.

The firm’s most valuable benefits were the background checks’ confidentiality, Castiglione said.

“Football and men’s and women’s basketball hires are so public now,” Castiglione said. “People want to know and they want to handicap the race for who will get the job. It ruins the evaluation and discovery of the recruitment. [Potential candidates ] get nervous.”