FAYETTEVILLE -- Perhaps without realizing it, senior Arkansas basketball guard Dusty Hannahs may have more respect for all the SEC championships won by the Razorbacks men's and women's track and cross country teams than any athlete at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Hannahs loathes running, but respects what running and conditioning has done for his game.
He has developed into a fine all-around scorer who also has contributed defensively after transferring from Texas Tech, where he was known strictly for his three-point shooting.
"When it comes to running, I really hate conditioning," Hannahs said on Coach Mike Anderson's Miked Up radio show Monday night. "I am not a big fan of running. It's a necessary evil because I have to wear down the guys that are guarding me. But I can tell you all when I am done playing, my running is done, too. I may find an elliptical machine or something, but I am going to be so done with running when I'm done."
Little Rock native Hannahs credits Anderson's conditioning regime "and a lot of workouts with Coach [Lee] Mayberry" to the development of his all-round game.
"It's been the best three years of my life," Hannahs said. "Especially after being down in that wasteland in Lubbock, Texas."
Anderson and his assistants deserve kudos for developing current seniors Hannahs and Razorbacks stalwarts Moses Kingsley and Manny Watkins, but no UA staff rivals men's track/cross country coach Chris Bucknam and assistants Travis Geopfert and Doug Case and women's track/cross country coach Lance Harter and assistants Chris Johnson and Bryan Compton for developing highly conditioned, champion runners.
Bucknam's No. 2 men's team goes into next week's NCAA Indoor Championships two-thirds of the way toward a second consecutive SEC cross country/indoor/outdoor triple crown after winning last week's SEC Indoors in Nashville.
With only 3,000-meter runner Jack Bruce winning an event, Bucknam's men fended off a surprise Alabama team 98-93 with more powerful Florida and Texas A&M unexpectedly struggling.
Harter's No. 3 women, now with nine consecutive SEC championships in cross country, indoor and outdoor track, won the SEC Indoors, logging historic performances from Cabot pole vaulting twins Tori and Lexi Weeks, who became the first collegiate women teammates clearing 15-0. Both cleared 15-1 to take first and second place.
But Daina Harper, emerging from the shadow of former Razorback and Olympian Taylor Ellis-Watson for a 400 victory in the nation's best sprints conference, seems the stunner of them all.
Except maybe to Harter and sprints coach Johnson. Both insisted Harper would replace Ellis-Watson, just as so many greats from both track programs have replaced the greats who graduated before them.
"I didn't think I could do it, but my coach always told me I could," Harper said at Tuesday's track luncheon. "I'm a senior and a captain and I knew I had to put it on my back because we don't have Taylor anymore."
Sports on 03/01/2017