FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas has won a basketball national championship and been to multiple Final Fours, but there is room for the program to record a first at the NCAA Tournament this week in San Francisco.
The Razorbacks are 0-10 against No. 1 seeds since the tournament adopted its current seeding format in 1979, which assigns a No. 1-seeded team to each of four regions.
On Thursday, Arkansas (27-8) will play Gonzaga (28-3), the No. 1 seed in the West Region and the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed.
It will be the second consecutive season the Razorbacks have played a No. 1 seed. Arkansas lost 81-72 to top-seeded Baylor in the championship game of the South Region in Indianapolis last March.
The Gonzaga game will be the Razorbacks’ second against the top overall seed in the tournament. In 2008, top overall seed North Carolina won a second-round game over Arkansas by a score of 108-77 in Raleigh, N.C.
A No. 1 overall seed was not assigned until 2004, but the Razorbacks played three No. 1 seeds between 1979-96 who were also the Associated Press No. 1.
In 1996, Massachusetts was considered the best team in the tournament. The Minutemen, coached by John Calipari, defeated Arkansas 79-63 at the Sweet 16 in Atlanta.
Arkansas was considered a long shot to beat UMass. The Razorbacks had lost all five starters from back-to-back Final Four teams prior to the season and advanced as a No. 12 seed with upset wins over Penn State and Marquette in Providence, R.I.
“What stood out to me after playing Penn State and Marquette was, it’s not really psychological until you get in the layup lines and you start playing,” Pat Bradley, a freshman guard that season, said of seeing UMass for the first time.
“The size, the overall skill, every player at just about every position — it kind of gives you an idea of where you need to be and where you need to get to as a team to be able to compete at that level."
Scotty Thurman has more experience with No. 1 seeds than most. As a player on three Arkansas postseason teams from 1993-95, Thurman twice lost to a No. 1 seed. He was also a member of the Razorbacks' 1994 national championship team that was the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region.
“Anytime you’re ranked, whether that’s No. 1 in the country or a No. 1 seed, everybody wants to try to knock the No. 1 team off,” Thurman said. “We did realize that the teams you face (as a No. 1 seed) seemed to have an extra push to try to knock you off the totem pole, so to speak.”
In 1993, Arkansas lost 80-74 to North Carolina at the East Regional in East Rutherford, N.J. Thurman’s final game was an 89-78 loss to UCLA in the 1995 national championship game in Seattle.
Thurman was an assistant coach in 2017 when Arkansas lost 72-65 to top-seeded North Carolina in the second round in Greenville, S.C. He said there is a psychological hurdle players have to clear when playing a highly ranked team.
“I think anytime you’re playing against those types of teams, in the back of your mind you kind of know that no one really expects you to be on that level,” Thurman said. “As a competitor, it gives you an added incentive to go out and show we’re pretty darn good, too, regardless of whether we’re seeded fourth or third or wherever. I think that’s what you’re seeing now in the tournament. It doesn’t matter the seeding; there’s good basketball being played at every level.”
Arkansas advanced to the Final Four three times from 1990-95 without playing a No. 1 seed. The Razorbacks beat a pair of No. 2 seeds — Arizona and Duke — at the 1994 Final Four in Charlotte, N.C.
The 1990 Razorbacks were the No. 4 seed in the Midwest Region, but caught a break when eighth-seeded North Carolina upset top-seeded Oklahoma in the second round. Arkansas defeated the Tar Heels 96-73 the following week in Dallas at the Sweet 16. The Razorbacks were eliminated by Duke, a No. 3 seed, at the Final Four in Denver.
In 1995, Arkansas was the No. 2 seed in the Midwest Region. Top-seeded Kansas was upset by fourth-seeded Virginia at the Sweet 16 in Kansas City, and the Razorbacks defeated the Cavaliers two days later to advance to the Final Four.
In Seattle, Arkansas defeated North Carolina, a No. 2 seed from the Southeast Region, before losing to UCLA, the AP No. 1.
Prior to 1979, seeding was based on whether a team was an automatic qualifier or had made the tournament as an at-large selection.
In 1978, the Razorbacks defeated UCLA 74-70 in Albuquerque, N.M. The Bruins were seeded 1Q as the top automatic qualifier in the West Region.
Arkansas was an at-large team that year after it was upset by Houston in the semifinals of the Southwest Conference Tournament. The Razorbacks had been ranked No. 1 in the AP poll a month earlier and might have been a No. 1 seed under the NCAA Tournament seeding format that was adopted the following year.
Instead they were seeded 2L, resulting in a matchup of AP top-five teams in the second-round matchup with UCLA.
Some of Arkansas’ most gut-wrenching tournament losses have been to No. 1 seeds. One such instance was 1983 when Louisville’s Scooter McCray tipped in a game winner as time expired to give the Cardinals a 65-63 victory over the Razorbacks in Knoxville, Tenn. McCray’s shot was the final in a flurry of second-chance opportunities under the basket as the clock wound down.
“We should have won that game,” said Joe Kleine, a sophomore that year who scored a game-high 21 points. “I remember us dominating them and kind of fading late and them winning at the buzzer. To me, that was the worst loss I ever had at Arkansas.”
In 1979, Arkansas lost to AP No. 1 Indiana State in the championship game of the Midwest Region in Cincinnati, Ohio — a matchup that featured Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame players Larry Bird and Sidney Moncrief. Both players starred, but the Sycamores’ Bob Heaton was the hero with a buzzer beater that gave Indiana State a 73-71 victory to remain undefeated.
Other top-seeded teams to defeat the Razorbacks were LSU in 1981 and St. John’s in 1985. All of the No. 1 seeds that defeated Arkansas played in the Final Four, and four — including Baylor last season — won the national championship game.
“That’s why I thought it was so important for Arkansas to play Baylor last year,” Bradley said, “because when you play against a national championship-type team — a team that can win it all — it opens your eyes big time to know how much you have to get better as a team and as a player.”
Gonzaga was last year’s national runner-up and is playing in the Sweet 16 for the seventh consecutive tournament. That kind of pedigree, as well as tournament experience for a roster of veteran players, was a hallmark of many of the No. 1 seeds that defeated Arkansas previously.
“That finality that kind of hangs over your head when you play in the tournament is something that you need to get used to,” Kleine said. “I think young freshmen that have never had that hanging over them tend to struggle down the stretch. The win-or-go-home thing is kind of the cloud that hangs over you as you’re playing and kind of follows you around, and it’s real. It’s something that’s on your mind.
"You feel it. You know the finality of the games you’re playing.”
Arkansas vs. No. 1 Seeds in NCAA Tournament
Year: Opponent, Result, Round
*1978: UCLA, W 74-70, Regional Semifinal
1979: Indiana State, L 73-71, Regional Final
1981: LSU, L 72-56, Regional Semifinal
1983: Louisville, L 65-63, Regional Semifinal
1985: St. John's, L 68-65, Second Round
1993: North Carolina, L 80-74, Regional Semifinal
1995: UCLA, L 89-78, National Final
1996: Massachusetts, L 79-63, Regional Semifinal
2008: North Carolina, L 108-77, Second Round
2017: North Carolina, L 72-65, Second Round
2021: Baylor, L 81-72, Regional Final
* — UCLA was one of two No. 1 seeds in the West Region at a time when automatic qualifiers and at-large teams were seeded separately. The NCAA adopted its current seeding format the following year.