FAYETTEVILLE - Arkansas didn’t have any seniors on its basketball team this season, but that doesn’t mean everyone will be back.
In fact, for the scholarship numbers to add up, at least one player has to leave or become a walk-on.
Arkansas had 12 scholarship players this season - one under the NCAA limit - and has signed two 6-9 high school players in McDonald’s All-American Bobby Portis from Little Rock Hall and Moses Kingsley from Huntington (W.Va.) Prep.
The Razorbacks also have offered scholarships to junior-college guards Jamal Jones from Lee College in Baytown, Texas, and Desmond Lee from New Mexico Junior College in Hobbs, N.M.
Jones, who is from Searcy and began his college career at Ole Miss, also has offers from Texas A&M, Missouri and Oregon. Lee, who is from Norfolk, Va., also has offers from North Carolina State and Illinois.
“We’re always recruiting,” Arkansas Coach Mike Anderson said Friday when he met with the media to discuss the Razorbacks’ 19-13 season that ended with a loss to Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament. “You never stop recruiting.
“I’ve been in this business long enough to understand that part of it, and when you talk about scholarships and what we have available, I’m sure when that time comes it will work itself out.”
Two scholarships will become available if sophomore guard BJ Young and red shirt junior forward Marshawn Powell, who both were second-team All-SEC picks by the coaches and averaged a combined 29.7 points, decide to pursue professional careers rather than return to Arkansas next season.
Young, who averaged a team-high 15.2 points and 3.3 assists, entered his name in the NBA Draft last season but didn’t hire an agent, and withdrew his name to return to Arkansas. If he enters his name again this year, he won’t have to option to withdraw it.
Powell, who averaged 14.5 points and a team-high 5.4 rebounds, showed he had recovered from surgery to his right knee for torn ligaments that sidelined him for all but the first two games of the 2011-2012 season.
Anderson said he doesn’t know what Young and Powell plan to do and that he likely won’t discuss the future with them until he holds individual player meetings in early April after the Final Four. Players are on spring break this week.
“I don’t deal in speculation. I never have,” Anderson said. “So once those guys get back and we get an opportunity, I’ll sit down with those guys as well as the rest of our team.
“In the meantime, if they come to me before then and want to address it, then we’ll address it.”
Anderson said no players have talked to him about possibly transferring. That subject could come up in the player meetings.
“One thing I do after every year is I evaluate myself,I evaluate our staff and each and every player,” Anderson said. “I’ll sit down with them one-on-one … find out whether we’re on the same page and what’s going to take place.”
One thing Anderson is sure about - he doesn’t want to miss the NCAA Tournament for a third consecutive year. That’s never happened in his previous coaching jobs.
Anderson was an assistant for Nolan Richardson at Tulsa and Arkansas when the Golden Hurricane made the NCAA Tournament in Anderson’s second season on the job and the Razorbacks made it in his third season. Anderson also played in the NCAA Tournament his second season as Tulsa’s starting point guard.
As a head coach, Anderson took Alabama-Birmingham to the NCAA Tournament in his second season and Missouri in his third season. He had a combined six NCAA Tournament appearances in nine seasons at UAB and Missouri.
Anderson opened his news conference Friday by saying he planned to be coaching in the NCAA Tournament next season, not talking to the media about the end of the season.
“Obviously, not only wanting to get to the dance, but we want to dance when we get there,” said Anderson, who has a 7-6 NCAA Tournament record. “I think the preparation for that starts right now, because the offseason should be really important to our players coming off this year.”
Anderson said he was disappointed Arkansas didn’t receive an NIT bid this season after going 10-8 in SEC play.The Razorbacks went 4-6 against teams in the NCAA Tournament and 3-2 against teams in the NIT.
“I just thought with the schedule we played, with the teams we beat … that our guys were more than worthy of [the NIT],” Anderson said. “I thought it could be a good building block for our basketball team. But we’ll use the off-season to do that.”
The Razorbacks went 18-14 and 6-10 in the SEC last season when Anderson returned to Arkansas.
“There was improvement with our basketball team and our program,” Anderson said. “We’re going in the right direction.
“Now, I’m one of those guys who is a bad loser. I like to win. But if you saw our team from the beginning of the year until the end of the year, it was different. The newcomers I thought picked up on some things that we were trying to do. Our older guys got some more experience.”
Anderson said competition for playing time “is wide open” for next season’s players.
“No one is starting right now,” he said. “So it should be super, super competition for minutes. This year, a lot of guys were the recipient of some playing time, sometimes by default.
“I’ve got more guys now that understand what we’re trying to do. Knowing that we’ve got to become better defensively and we want to play a certain style of basketball, and that certain style is winning basketball.”
Sports, Pages 25 on 03/23/2013