FAYETTEVILLE — As the University of Arkansas opens its European tour with an exhibition game today against Valencia Seleccion in Spain, one thing on the mind of Razorbacks Coach Eric Musselman will be Kendall Stephens’ three-point shooting.
Stephens isn’t one of Arkansas’ 11 newcomers. He’s not an American who plays for Valencia Seleccion.
When Musselman coached at Nevada and took the Wolf Pack on a foreign tour in Costa Rica in August 2017, Stephens was a 6-6 transfer from Purdue. He had hit 175 three-pointers in three seasons with the Boilermakers.
But Stephens couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean from a Costa Rican beach the way Musselman remembers it.
“Kendall Stevens was 0 for Costa Rica,” Musselman said. “I think he was 0 for 16 from three.
“I’ll never forget, everybody was dressed, it was right after a game and the only place we could meet was in a shower. We were all in there, and I asked Kendall if he was ever going to make a three-point shot in a Nevada Wolf Pack uniform.”
Stephens responded by hitting 126 of 292 three-pointers to help Nevada to a 29-8 record and spot in the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16. He broke the Mountain West Conference single-season record of 124 three-pointers Jimmer Fredette hit for BYU during the 2010-11 season when he was the national player of the year.
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The lesson in that story, Musselman said, is while he expects to learn much about his team during its four exhibition games in Spain and Italy, he can’t overreact to one thing that might happen before the regular season starts.
“I think that this is good, but that’s never going to leave my mind, that it also is just one piece to a long puzzle leading up to November,” Musselman said. “Then that puzzle continues to evolve once you get — as we’ve seen our team evolve — in January and February.
“But is the trip important? Absolutely. And it’s important for a lot of things. It’s important for the families. The wives that sacrifice us being away all the time, for them to feel a part of a long, extended road trip out of the country.”
Along with family, also traveling with the team are all the staff members, including those who work in academics and nutrition.
“It’s our whole family going on this thing, which is not always how we travel,” Musselman said.
Arkansas’ 15 players have been on campus and going through workouts most of the summer, including 10 full-scale practices the previous two weeks allowed by the NCAA for teams going on foreign tours.
But having the players together overseas figures to take their closeness to another level.
“To me, it’s more than a basketball trip,” freshman forward Jordan Walsh said. “It’s a team bonding trip.”
Since the team arrived in Valencia on Sunday, the Razorbacks’ basketball Twitter account has featured photos of the players sightseeing in the city and playing football in the Mediterranean Sea.
“I feel like this is a trip that really helps us connect,” freshman guard Barry Dunning said. “Connection and teamwork all leads into March, and that’s where we’re trying to get to, to that Final Four.
“I feel like this trip is going to be for the betterment of the team.”
Senior forward Jalen Graham is a transfer from Arizona State, where his first regular-season game was against Colorado in Shanghai, China, to open the 2019-20 season.
Colorado beat Arizona State 81-71 in a game that was part of the Pac-12 Conference’s global initiative with China.
“The experiences that you make with your teammates on those types of trips are just very helpful throughout the whole year,” said Graham, who started against Colorado and had 6 points, 5 blocked shots and 3 rebounds in 28 minutes. “You bond with everybody. You see each other so much.”
Playing basketball against other teams — even if the games don’t count on the Razorbacks’ record — also matters.
“One thing I’m looking forward to is being able to just play,” freshman guard Nick Smith said. “I’ve been practicing all this time. I just want to play.
“I’m pretty sure everybody on the team wants to play. We’re tired of beating each other up, tired of going at it in practice. We want to play against new bodies.”
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Foreign teams generally have players in their late 20s and early 30s.
“I want to be able to play against those grown men,” Walsh said. “Hopefully that can be my future eventually. I want to play against those older people, more mature people.”
In contrast to the extensive scouting Arkansas’ staff does for regular-season opponents, Musselman said he doesn’t know much about the teams the Razorbacks will face in Spain and Italy.
“Our scouting will be postgame,” he said of evaluating the Razorbacks. “We’ll take the film and coach the heck out of our guys on the film that we have, but we’re not going to worry [about scouting opponents] at all.
“I’ll go into each game with a script of a rotation, and we’ll go in with a script of what we want to run offensively. We’ll have a script of how we want to play.
“The last five, six, seven minutes, maybe at that time we’ll adjust. But I don’t think we’ll make many adjustments probably until towards the later part of each game.”
Then after each game, Musselman might give some more thought to Kendall Stephens and his three-point shooting.
Razorbacks' exhibition game schedule
• Arkansas’ exhibition basketball games in Spain and Italy will be available for viewing via a subscription to FloSports, the program announced. The subscription to watch the four games will be $29.99, according to a news release.
Games will be streamed live on FloHoops.com and archived to watch on demand on the website or app. Brett Dolan and Matt Zimmerman will call the games remotely.
Here is a schedule for the games:
All times Central
TODAY, AUG. 9
vs. Valencia Seleccion, 12:30 p.m. (Valencia, Spain)
THURSDAY, AUG. 11
vs. Barcelona Todo-Estrella, 1:30 p.m. (Barcelona, Spain)
SATURDAY, AUG. 13
vs. Orange 1 Basket Bassano, 12:30 p.m. (Como, Italy)
MONDAY, AUG. 15
vs. Bakken Bears, noon (Como, Italy)