FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas senior forward Charles Thomas senses better chemistry for this season’s Razorbacks. It’s the best they’ve had since he arrived on campus in the summer of 2004.

“This is the closest we’ve been as a team in the four years since I’ve been here,” Thomas said Tuesday during Arkansas ’ basketball media day. “We hang together more.

“ I think it starts with the head coach and trickles down to the players.”

John Pelphrey became Arkansas’ coach last April and constantly has stressed the importance of players being unselfish and supporting each other.

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“I think the talent level is good enough here to win a lot of basketball games and get to the postseason,” Pelphrey said while addressing a room full of media members at Walton Arena two days before the Razorbacks open preseason practice Friday night. “How many teams across the country can make those claims ? Probably quite a few.”

Pelphrey, a former Kentucky player who was South Alabama’s coach the previous five seasons, said the intangibles are what can make Arkansas a special team.

“Are we going to be close-knit ? Are we going to have each other’s back ?” Pelphrey said of the attitude he wants his players to share. “Am I going to be willing to do less so the team can do more ?”

Pelphrey said if the Razorbacks don’t embrace the core values he’s repeated endlessly to them, their talent level and style won’t matter.

“Maybe I’m sounding repetitive and maybe I’m making it sound too simplistic,” Pelphrey said. “But I really believe if you can’t do the fundamental things, if you can’t all get along... it’s really not going to matter what system [you run ], what style.”

Players appear to be buying into the team chemistry Pelphrey and his coaching staff are trying to build.

“I think everybody is on the same page,” Arkansas sophomore guard Patrick Beverley said. “As a team, we’ve gotten so much closer.

“ We don’t want to go out and end the season like we did last year, so some things have to change for the better.”

Arkansas made it to the NCAA Tournament last season but was shipped to Spokane, Wash., as a No. 12 seed and lost a first-round game to Southern California 77-60 to finish 21-14.

Stan Heath was fired as coach and replaced by Pelphrey, who was hired not just to get to the NCAA Tournament but to win postseason games and fill Walton Arena on a regular basis.

“Coming in here, we knew the chemistry hadn’t been very good and we needed to address that,” said Rob Evans, the former Ole Miss and Arizona State coach who is Pelphrey’s top assistant at Arkansas. “A lot [of the players ] didn’t like each other, didn’t trust each other, so we’ve spent quite a bit of time making sure we talked about that to try and make sure the chemistry is good to give ourselves a chance to be successful.”

Evans said coaches have told players they have to communicate better than they did in the past.

“A lot of times guys don’t understand each other because they don’t spend time getting to know each other,” Evans said. “It’s a matter of spending a lot of time with these guys and trying to figure out why they didn’t communicate better and getting them to do that now.”

Razorbacks senior center Steven Hill said players are relating better to each other and were brought closer together by the uncertainty they faced with the coaching change last spring.

“There have been a lot of ups and downs, on and off the floor, for us,” Hill said. “We’ve stuck together and kept our heads up and tried to make the best of it and I think that has helped our team chemistry.

“ We really are enjoying each other off the floor, and I think that carries over into the basketball part of it.”

Pelphrey said it’s good to hear the players believe the team is more close-knit this season, but he knows it’s early October.

“I think there has been some progress made there, and these guys are starting to put some of the blocks in the wall in regards to what we believe is important to building a team,” Pelphrey said. “But we haven’t been tested yet.

“ We’ll see what happens when some adversity sets in during the season. When that happens, do we stay together or do we fragment and go our separate ways ?”