FAYETTEVILLE — The trip home from Knoxville, Tenn., was about as tough for the University of Arkansas basketball team as its 79-74 loss to No. 9 Tennessee on Wednesday night in Thompson-Boling Arena.
The Razorbacks should have been home for about two hours by the time the team finally left Knoxville.
The game started at 6 p.m. and ended at 8:06 p.m, but Arkansas didn’t leave the arena until nearly midnight, because the Razorbacks needed to wait for another chartered plane and pilot after the first plane they expected to take home was grounded.
“Worst travel I ever had,” Arkansas Coach Eric Musselman said in a text message.
The Razorbacks’ second chartered flight didn’t leave the Knoxville airport until about 1:30 a.m. Thursday and landed at Drake Field about 3 a.m.
“Our plane landed about halftime [in Knoxville] and had mechanical trouble,” said Riley Hall, Arkansas’ video coordinator. “We had to wait on a new plane to fly in from Memphis. That plane was waiting on a pilot to get there on a commercial flight from Dallas.”
Hall said the Razorbacks originally had been scheduled to get home about 11:30 p.m.
“Everyone got home around 3:45 [a.m.] after unloading bags and getting back to their cars [at Walton Arena],” Hall said.