“It’s a Small World” was the song Nolan Richardson could have been humming Sunday afternoon when he revealed an amazing chain of connecting ties.
Richardson is connected to first-year Arkansas coach Eric Musselman. Mike Anderson’s connections with Richardson have also served him well as the new St. John’s basketball coach.
“It’s amazing how some of the things have tied it altogether for me,” Richardson said in an hour-long phone interview from his Fayetteville home.
For instance, when Musselman was hired at Arkansas, former Richardson assistant coach Rob Spivery phoned to give him the scoop on his old basketball coach, Musselman’s father, Bill.
Spivery was an assistant at Tulsa during Richardson’s five seasons as head coach. He later was head coach at Montevallo State, Ashland, Alabama State and Southern. He played for Bill Musselman at Ashland.
“Rob called and told me that when he was playing for Eric’s dad, Eric was a 5-year-old,” Richardson said. “Basically, he said Eric was around the team all the time. He watched him grow up.”
It made for an instant bond when Richardson went to one of Musselman’s first practices last year.
“We visited when he first got the job, then I went by for that first practice and it was something we were amazed to talk about, how well he knew one of my former assistants,” Richardson said. “Immediately, Eric told me, ‘Look in the media guide, that team that Rob played on for my dad was the best in the history of the school.’”
They soon realized there were many more connections in the Musselman coaching tree and the Richardson tree. The branches in recruiting grew together.
“He knew some of my connections in Louisiana from coaching at LSU,” Richardson said. “Of course, Corey Beck played against his CBA teams and we could share Beck stories.”
The Richardson network has helped Anderson in his first year at St. John’s. An old friend from Richardson’s Texas-El Paso days has come in handy as Anderson learned the recruiting landscape around the Queens, N.Y., campus.
“I helped recruit Nate (Tiny) Archibald to UTEP,” Richardson said. “He came just after me and I showed him around. We’ve been friends ever since.
“So when Mike got the St. John’s job, I called Nate and he’s helped Mike get to know the AAU teams near the campus. And, if you know about the Bronx and Queens, you know there are great players all around. Mike doesn’t have to leave town to find players. Mike can walk to see a recruit.
“Nate is part of us, part of the UTEP history, and he knows that city as well as anyone. I go back with Nate before he was in the NBA and he’s gotten close to Mike.”
That was a thrill for Richardson to see when he was invited to speak at the pre-Midnight Madness event on the St. John’s campus that was a fundraiser for the athletics program.
“It was a big night,” Richardson said. “I was the guest speaker and we raised $600,000. It was a lot of fun.”
Richardson watched some early practices, but hasn’t been back for any games in the 17-15 season for the Red Storm.
Travel has been tough the last year. His wife, Rose, is bed ridden after a series of surgeries left her in the hospital all of 2018.
“She’s home now, but I’m the caregiver,” Richardson said. “I’m pretty much here.”
There is more to take care of than Rose on the Richardson Ranch. There are 17 horses and other assorted animals.
“I’ve got Godfrey Siamusiye and his family here to help with the horses,” Richardson said. “He’s like a son. He’s been with me 25 years. I built a house on my land for him.”
Siamusiye won two NCAA cross country individual crowns and ran in two Olympics for Zambia.
There’s too much going on there to leave much, but lots of time to watch basketball on TV.
“I watch every Arkansas game and every St. John’s game,” Richardson said. “I enjoy watching both teams play.”
Richardson attended three Arkansas games in Musselman’s first season: the scrimmage against Arkansas-Little Rock when the floor at Bud Walton Arena was named in his honor, as well as games against Kentucky and LSU.
“I’m impressed with what (the Razorbacks) did,” Richardson said. “I say I enjoy watching Eric’s teams play because they just play so damn hard. That’s the most important thing: Do you play hard?
“I’ve always said it doesn’t matter what Xs and Os you coach, you are not going to be successful if you don’t play hard. That’s what I always wanted from my team. You play your Xs and Os, I’ll cover them because we are going to play so hard.”
That’s what he saw of Anderson’s teams this year, too.
“The Big East has all of its games on TV, so I watch,” Richardson said. “I got to see one of his practices and Mike asked me what I thought. Of course, he’s lost some of his key players to injuries, but that’s allowed some of his younger players to develop.”
Some figured Anderson would have his first losing season, but the Red Storm hit a hot streak late with wins in three of its last four games, including a 20-point victory over then-No. 7 Creighton. There were also upset victories over then-No. 16 Arizona and another victory over then-No. 10 Creighton, as well as a victory over West Virginia, now ranked 22nd, but unranked at the time.
“That makes Mike now one of only three (college coaches) never to have had a losing season,” Richardson said, “because Roy Williams fell out this year.”
North Carolina and Williams finished 14-19. The other two active coaches who have coached as long as Anderson without a losing record are Tom Izzo at Michigan State and Mark Few at Gonzaga.
As far as playing hard, Richardson said he learned that was the key to basketball in college under Don Haskins, the UTEP coach who won the 1966 national title when the school was still called Texas Western. That was two years after Richardson played for Haskins.
“We were not always the most gifted teams at UTEP, but we played harder than anyone else,” he said. “That’s how he learned to play under Henry Iba.
“That’s the key. You can list all of your keys, but the only one that matters was how hard you play. If you play hard, the other keys will be fine and I don’t care what you draw up.”
Nolan Richardson yells at guard Pat Bradley during a 1996 practice in Providence, R.I. Richardson's practices were tough, which he said made the games easy for his teams. (AP Photo/Winslow Townson)
The essence of coaching might be getting your players to play hard, but how did Richardson do it?
“You get after their ass (in practice) and make them play hard,” he said. “I learned that’s how you did it when I coached high school.
“You do it by doing it every day, you play hard in everything you do. It eventually becomes a habit, who you are. If you do, then you have a chance to be pretty good, by hard work.
“Our 40 Minutes of Hell saying, it was just about playing hard for all 40 minutes in practice. We practiced hard. You were going to be glad to go to a game. That was easy.
“Practice is not fun. It was hard work. You keep your energy up in practice, it’s easy in a game. We practiced hard regardless of what day it was, or if a game was coming. We might cut back the length, but we never did anything where we weren’t going hard.”
It was often viewed as unorthodox.
“We were creating havoc,” he said. “Our traps were unorthodox, but I have seen Eric’s teams trap in some of the same places. You take the ball into the wrong place, they have some automatic traps.”
It didn’t always work.
“There are a lot of things I look back on and wish I’d done better,” Richardson said. “There are games we should have won that we didn’t. But there were games we should have got our butts beat that we didn’t.”
And, there are regrets.
“I have two main regrets for my entire athletic life for sure,” he said. “I think about them all the time.
“There is losing the ’95 national title game. I feel like that one was on me. It was a game that I didn’t approach my normal way. And, then there was my last game of my high school career, a baseball game.
“I had a chance to drive in the run to take us to the state championship game. I tried to hit a home run and all I needed was a single. I popped up to first base. It still haunts me.”
The 89-78 loss to UCLA in the 1995 title game in Seattle has come up in Richardson’s reflections before. He said he was out of his usual fire for the pregame talk before going to the Kingdome.
“There was a dinner the sportswriters had to honor me with a courage award,” he said. “There was a video (of his late daughter) Yvonne. I left there in tears. Bob Carver drove me while I cried. It just took the fight out of me. It was like I was drugged as I got up to talk to the team.”
Richardson said during a time that he’d usually “get after their ass,” the pregame speech was more like, “Let’s go people.”
The game was more of the same.
“I was withdrawn on the bench,” he said. “I was never like that. I couldn’t come up with those choice words that you would see normally.
“You know me, ‘If you see me in a fight with a bear, worry about the bear,’ and that was not the way I was. I had no kickass in me. I told the guys afterward that it wasn’t me and it was on me. I didn’t have it.”
There was one other major issue, an injury that few mentioned afterward. Clint McDaniel collided with Corliss Williamson late in the first half as both chased a loose ball. McDaniel injured ribs and wasn’t able to breathe normally in the second half. He came out of the game in the first minute of the second half and did not return.
“Sometimes it doesn’t take much to change the game,” Richardson said. “You never know what it might be and that was important. Clint couldn’t go. But it was more than that. I don’t ever remember Corliss and Scotty (Thurman) being off at the same time. It was probably their worst combined game (17 points, 7 rebounds combined).
“But it was more about me and my approach. I just didn’t have it.”
Nolan Richardson hangs his head as he speaks to his team following a loss to UCLA in the 1995 national championship game. Richardson calls the loss his biggest basketball regret. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
Richardson had “it” most of the time, but strangely it didn’t always produce the right recognition. There is a strange flip in honors after Richardson arrived in the SEC, after an amazing trend.
Asked about how he could only earn SEC coach of the year honors once, Richardson laughed.
“That is unusual, right?” he said. “I was coach of the year all three years in junior college, three out of five years in the Missouri Valley, three more times in the SWC. We moved to the SEC, things changed. I don’t think they were used to having a black man coach teams.
“I didn’t get it in ’94 when we won the national title, not the SEC coach of the year. We were runner-up the next year and no. The only time was 1998 and we were really not good.
“Here we’ve been busting ass all these years (in the SEC) and not coach of the year until ’98. Now, I’d get national coach of the year (in 1994), but only one time in the SEC.
“I think it was Yvonne that used to tell me about my accomplishments. I never noticed, but she did. She used to ask me to look at record books at where we’d been.”
There are plenty of trophies and plaques in the Richardson home, a sort of shrine to his career in which he won 508 games in Division I and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
“I’ve got what I call my ‘Hall of Fame room’ at the house, full of stuff,” Richardson said. “It really shows what a blessed life I’ve had, so many things won. And, there are things that I can’t even get in that room that are stored in the garage.”
There are good things coming at Arkansas, according to Richardson. He likes the way things line up for Musselman.
“He really inherited some good shooters,” he said. “Mason Jones continues to develop and Isaiah Joe can really shoot it. I wasn’t sure what Desi Sills brought when Mike signed him, but I really like his toughness. Mike told me that and now I see it.
“It’s going to be fun and I think Eric is going to do well. I like him a lot.”
Richardson hopes to see more of it. At 78, he’s still enjoying the ride and the perks of being the greatest Arkansas basketball coach. He enjoys Fayetteville.
There are still great memories, some that might surprise. He speaks fondly of the trip to Augusta National Golf Club arranged by Frank Broyles after the ’94 title.
“That was one of the perks,” Richardson said. “I’m not sure how many holes of golf I played over two days, but it was a lot.
“I flew in the first day about 11:30 a.m., went straight to the clubhouse and then to the first tee. Frank was in the group and I believe we played 50 holes, until it was dark.
“We were back at 6 a.m., and played 36 or 40 holes, a lot, then got on a plane and came home.”
Richardson thinks he carded “83 or 84” in his first 18, not bad after not picking up a club over the basketball season.
“I do remember the craziness of those greens,” he said. “I had a four-putt, something I’d never done. There was one green that the caddie told me to turn my back from the hole and putt up a hill.
“I didn’t believe it until he turned away from the hole and rolled a ball up that hill. It came back and next to the cup. I did exactly what he told me.
“I’ve never seen a course that posh. I don’t think they had rough. It was mowed the same, fairway and rough. No course has ever looked prettier. You couldn’t have a bad lie. You never were in real trouble, could always get it back in play, maybe with a shot at the green.”
But those greens were difficult to read and putt.
“They sure were,” Richardson said. “Some incredible mounds and humps. To read, they were extremely tough. I didn’t believe it.”
They were just like a Nolan Richardson practice. They wreaked havoc.