Hog Calls

Arkansas teams savor triple crowns

Arkansas track coach Chris Bucknam, left, talks with UA facilities director Scott Sargent during a meet Friday, Jan. 15, 2016, at Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville.

FAYETTEVILLE -- Between them, retired Arkansas Razorbacks men's Coach John McDonnell, women's Coach Lance Harter and men's Coach Chris Bucknam have won 29 conference cross country-indoor track and field-outdoor track and field triple crowns.

Only one had been achieved with the simultaneous double dominance of Bucknam's men and Harter's women completing their last jewel at the SEC Outdoor meets Thursday through Saturday in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Their Tuscaloosa triumphs followed SEC cross country crowns last fall in College Station, Texas and SEC indoor crowns last winter in Fayetteville.

"That's the second time ever in SEC history and only by Arkansas," Harter said of one school's men's and women's simultaneous SEC sweep in the same academic year. "I think in 1999-2000 John and I won both. So that's a historical reference."

Every reference to Arkansas cross country, indoor and outdoor track and field seems historic. McDonnell's 84 conference championships from 1972 through 2008, including 20 triple crowns, started a book that Harter and Bucknam enhance chapter after chapter.

Arkansas' women's coach since its final 1990-91 Southwest Conference campaign, Harter has won 28 SEC titles with six SEC triple crowns.

Coaching Arkansas' men, since 2008-2009, Bucknam has won 17 SEC titles with three SEC triple crowns.

Sharing a triple together means so much to both.

"Bucky's men had some great performances," Harter said. "Like Clive Pullen's 55 feet (a personal record) winning the triple jump and they just were always right there. Place after place and cumulatively that took it's toll on the SEC."

Bucknam said men's assistant coaches Doug Case and Travis Geopfert and women's assistants Chris Johnson and Bryan Compton certainly share triple elation.

"Our staffs get along really good," Bucknam said. "There is mutual respect. I am happy for Lance and his program. They [consecutive SEC women's triple crowns] are on a great run and have a wonderful group of kids and I am thrilled for them. It's nice to get on the plane together and you bring home two trophies."

Now if only in June they could fly home from Eugene, Ore., as mutually thrilled by the NCAA Outdoor outcome ...

"That's the plan," Bucknam said.

In the recent men's national rankings, the SEC top five Texas A&M, Florida, LSU, Arkansas and Georgia matched the national top five.

Bucknam's men beat them all and all but one soundly. Texas A&M's 101 points came closest to Arkansas 121.

The others trailed host team Alabama's 88.

Nationally, Harter's No. 2 ranked women played second fiddle to Kentucky with Florida, sixth, LSU, seventh, and Texas A&M, 10th.

Kentucky's 80 SEC points were a distant third to Arkansas' 126 3/4, with A&M second, 82.

Of course, conference champions and the NCAA meet format don't always compute. And NCAA Outdoors host Oregon, the NCAA Indoor champion of both men and women, presents major dual obstacles.

But those are other matters for another time.

Regardless what transpires in Eugene, shared SEC triples in the nation's by far toughest track conference should be Arkansas treasured in their own right.

Sports on 05/16/2016