FAYETTEVILLE — With consecutive years of Eric Musselman coaching the Razorbacks to college basketball’s Elite Eight, guess it’s natural for some becoming social media restive about how soon can he ascend Arkansas to the Final Four.
Natural but incomprehensible.
Elite Eights may look easy upon consecutive achievements.
They are not.
In the late Eddie Sutton’s 11 Razorbacks years of a 37-year Hall of Fame career, his lone two Arkansas Elite Eights came in his Final Four year of 1978 and the 1979 Elite Eight.
Sutton coached some very good Razorbacks teams with great players Darrell Walker, Alvin Robertson, Joe Kleine among them from 1980-84, but never cracked the Elite Eight with Arkansas again.
Hall of Famer Nolan Richardson mounted an incredible run with a Final Four and Elite Eight for 1990 and ’91, and successive Final Fours for Arkansas’ lone national championship and lone national runner-up in 1994 and ’95.
But after a Sweet Sixteen in 1996 his Hogs through 2002 never went past Round 2 of the NCAA Tournament.
Two successors combined for three NCAA appearances from 2003-2011. None extended beyond Round 1.
Mike Anderson, a solid coach with a surprising Sweet Sixteen at Alabama-Birmingham and Elite Eight at Missouri, and the 2020-21 Big East Coach of the Year at St. John’s, advanced Arkansas to three NCAA Tournaments. None beyond Round 2.
For Musselman to accomplish what he’s accomplished amazes. It seems to bode more amazement with three McDonald’s All-Americans among six signees and a 6-9 sophomore shot-blocker transferring from Mizzou.
But there are no guarantees.
An injury here, a questionable call there, can commence decades with no Elite Eight to appreciate.
Or for SEC members Ole Miss and Texas A&M, a combined 224 years with no Elite Eight on either’s slate.
Congress looks to clean up inept NCAA
Seems the NCAA could achieve the truly unthinkable.
It poises on the verge of uniting the United States Senate. Unfathomable. Seems these days Congress can’t agree on anything other than blaming each other.
But two senators from the left and right, Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, co-author a bill directly aimed at the NCAA’s Enforcement division.
It demands that NCAA’s investigations, sometimes dragging for years, be completed within eight months of a school receiving NCAA investigation notice. The bill would prohibit “confidential sources” as investigative evidence. It would prohibit the NCAA investigating supposed violations alleged to have occurred more than two years before a school receives NCAA investigation notice.
Like much involving Congress, opportunity abounds for political grandstanding.
The NCAA has only itself to blame. Years of winking at some similar transgressions for which it penalizes others severely, and investigations so prolonged that those truly paying the penalties too often are current coaches and athletes, not at the school when initially under investigation, could make even MSNBC and Fox News nod joint disapproval.
Its history of high handed bungling unravels the NCAA to become today’s piñata whacked left and right.