Like It Is

Arkansas basketball on solid ground again

Arkansas coach Mike Anderson watches from the sideline during a game against LSU on Saturday, March 7, 2015, at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.

Correction: The University of Kansas won the 2008 NCAA men’s basketball championship. This story had an incorrect team as the champion.

Kung Fu Panda was raking in the big money in movie theaters the last time the Arkansas Razorbacks won an SEC Tournament game.

It was 2008, and under first-year Coach John Pelphrey the Razorbacks knocked off Vanderbilt and Tennessee before losing to Georgia. The Razorbacks were awarded a No. 9 seed for the NCAA Tournament and drew Indiana, a program in complete turmoil at the time after its coach had been fired. Arkansas won that game before losing to North Carolina, which went on to win the championship.

It appeared the Razorbacks were on their way back to the top.

From the 1988-1989 season through the 1994-1995 season, the Hogs were one of the most feared teams in the country, and for good reason. In that seven-year span Nolan Richardson's regular-season record was 200-44 (an 82 percent winning percentage), his conference tournament record was 13-5, and his NCAA record was a phenomenal 22-6.

After that it was pretty much hit or miss -- mostly miss -- until 2008, but it took only one more season for the Razorback Nation to realize more misses were coming.

The team nobody wanted to draw in the NCAA Tournament was nowhere to be found.

Now, it appears Coach Mike Anderson at least has the ship going in the right direction, but it hasn't been easy.

By the time Pelphrey had been fired, with a buyout that continued until this season, the Razorbacks program was going nowhere fast. Pelphrey's SEC record was 25-39, and he left behind a program almost void of discipline.

Anderson was handed a setback when Rotnei Clarke jumped ship to Butler. Obviously the thought of playing 94 feet of defense didn't appeal to the sharp-shooter, but if he had hung around he probably would have gotten about 20 shots a game.

Clarke, who when last heard from was playing professionally in Belgium, probably wouldn't have broken Pat Bradley's record of 366 three-pointers, but in Anderson's green-light offensive system he would have had a shot. Clarke ended his run at Arkansas with 274 three-pointers.

Anderson, one of only 10 men's college basketball coaches to not have a losing season during his career as a head coach, never complained. He still hasn't, and now the Hogs appear ready to fill in their card for the Big Dance.

They still have the SEC Tournament to deal with, but the fact is if they win tonight they are going to be at least a No. 5 seed. Whatever happens after tonight won't matter.

Understand that this is the third day the NCAA Tournament selection committee has been sequestered on a guarded hotel floor with only each other to talk to, and mostly about basketball.

As the midlevel tournaments end, the 10-person committee is filling in blanks as fast as it can. There is absolutely no way to seed 68 teams Sunday and still have a selection show that is heavy on advertising.

The committee has to look at the body of work, and the Razorbacks present a really solid piece of craftsmanship this season.

The Hogs finished the regular season 24-7, their most victories in a season since 1997-1998, and were 13-5 in SEC play, their most conference victories since 1993-1994, although the conference has played two more league games a season since Missouri and Texas A&M joined.

Of those 13 victories, six were on the road, which means Anderson and these Hogs have destroyed that nemesis. They have become road killers instead of roadkill.

It has been a long wait for the Razorbacks faithful, but it appears this will not be a one-year pie-in-the-sky season.

Sports on 03/13/2015