FAYETTEVILLE — After Arkansas’ women’s basketball team was blown out by Tennessee to fall to 0-3 in SEC play, Razorbacks Coach Tom Collen did some alterations in the team’s locker room.
Collen took down the standings board that showed Arkansas last and replaced it with one that had the Razorbacks starting over.
It wasn’t quite a Jedi mind trick, but the tactic worked all the same as Arkansas rebounded from its 0-3 start — which eventually became 0-4 — to finish the season with 10 conference victories in 12 games. The surge, highlighted by an eight-game winning streak, pushed the Razorbacks (21-7) into a tie for fourth in the conference race and earned the team the No. 5 seed in the SEC Tournament, which begins today in Nashville, Tenn.
The turnaround also earned Collen the respect of his peers, who voted him as the conference’s Coach of the Year on Wednesday.
“It’s certainly a surprise to me,” Collen said. “It’s nothing I would have expected. It’s a tribute to the players, because they were the ones who believed. I didn’t make any baskets all year long.”
Arkansas senior guard C’eira Ricketts was named to the All-SEC first team, while junior forward Sarah Watkins made the second team and guard Calli Berna made the all-freshman team.
Collen said the turnaround happened through the triumph of preparation over panic. The Razorbacks started SEC play against Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee, teams that would finish as the best in the conference and are all ranked in the top 16 nationally.
Collen didn’t tell his team it would start 0-3, but he prepared the Razorbacks for the possibility. When it happened, Collen said it was disappointing but not heartbreaking.
Collen removed those three teams from the standings board so the Razorbacks wouldn’t have a constant reminder of the past failures but what they had to play for the rest of the season.
“We had a tough SEC schedule and it got us down,” Ricketts said. “The new board picked us up. We said we can still make it.”
A fourth loss to Ole Miss was harder to take, but the Razorbacks righted the ship with a victory against Auburn at home. That sparked the streak, which included victories against then-ranked Vanderbilt and South Carolina.
The run came to an end Feb. 16 when LSU defeated Arkansas 50-42 at Walton Arena in Fayetteville, but by that time the Razorbacks were playing like a different team. Arkansas won its next two games, which included recording its first ever victory in Knoxville, Tenn., on Feb. 23 when the Razorbacks knocked off the 10th-ranked Lady Volunteers 72-71 in overtime.
“When you play in the SEC, there’s a pretty fine margin between third and eighth,” Collen said. “I don’t know if we overachieved. When we started winning, the players thought, ‘Maybe we are the fourth-best team in the league.’
“We played like it the rest of the year.”
COACH OF THE YEAR
Tom Collen, Arkansas
PLAYER OF THE YEAR
A’dia Mathies, Kentucky
FRESHMAN OF THE YEAR
Bria Goss, Kentucky
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Glory Johnson, Tennessee
SIXTH MAN OF THE YEAR
Deana Allen, Florida and Keyla Snowden, Kentucky NOTE Shekinna Stricklen is from Morrilton.
Sports, Pages 21 on 03/01/2012