Razorbacks set for SEC Tourney and beyond
FAYETTEVILLE - This week at the University of Arkansas one basketball program begins what it hopes to be a long postseason while another begins what could be a coaching search long into the postseason.
Coach Mike Anderson’s Razorbacks men, closing their SEC regular season winning 6 of their last 7 and achieving a 12-6 SEC third place and overall record of 23-8, advance with a double bye to Friday’s quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament which starts Wednesday in Nashville and continues through Sunday.
The Razorbacks appear assured of the NCAA Tournament bid beyond the SEC Tournament which the 27-9 Hogs of 20142015 achieved but obviously last season’s 16-16 Arkansas team of 2015-2016 could not.
Last year’s first-round SEC Tournament loss cast Arkansas out of consideration for the NIT and other postseason tournaments subordinate to the NCAA Tournament often called The Big Dance.
The Razorbacks Friday night play either Ole Miss, Auburn or Missouri.
Eleventh-seeded Auburn, 18-13 overall and 7-11 in the SEC, and 14th-seed Missouri, 7-23, 2-16 play Wednesday night. That winner advances Thursday night against Ole Miss, 19-12 and 10-8 tied in the SEC with Alabama and Vanderbilt behind SEC champion Kentucky, 26-5, 16-2, Florida, 24-7, 14-4 and tied for third Arkansas and South Carolina.
Arkansas is seeded third in the SEC Tournament and South Carolina, 22-9, 12-6, seeded fourth because Arkansas won their lone meeting on Feb. 15 in Columbia, S.C.
South Carolina also gets a double bye until Friday as of course do Kentucky and Florida.
While the Big Dance obviously is The Big Tournament for Arkansas, the SEC Tournament comes next. It will have the Razorbacks’ full focus, Anderson and seniors Moses Kingsley, Manny Watkins and Dusty Hannahs vowed even while relishing last Saturday’s 85-67 Senior Day victory at Walton Arena over Georgia.
For after saying, “We’ve done what we’re supposed to do,” for NCAA Tournament at large consideration, Anderson said the SEC’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid comes only with winning the SEC Tournament.
“I’m proud of these guys to finish it up the right way,” Anderson said of how seniors Kingsley, Watkins and Hannahs and their teammates played on Senior Day marking Arkansas’ sixth victory in the last seven games. “But that wagon is over with. Of course now we go to the next season, which is the SEC Tournament. So we're looking forward to that. it's a different season. It's a one-game season. You kind of survive and advance and move on. We're looking forward to the opportunity.”
On the Walton Arena floor postgame with the 16,000-plus crowd still on hand, Hannahs seized the public address microphone and proclaimed, “I just want to let y’all know we’re dancing.”
By the postgame interview he amended which dance comes first.
“I know I said that and I'm really excited to go get this one,” Hannahs said. “But we still have the SEC Tournament in front of us. We'll try to get that automatic bid too.”
Watkins and Kingsley concurred.
Meanwhile it seems that Athletic Director Jeff Long ought to hope for a long search to replace Jimmy Dykes whose “resignation” as the Razorbacks’ women’s basketball coach after a 2-14 SEC campaign was announced last Friday.
Given the success of the teams they coach, it could be awhile before former Arkansas assistants Vic Schaefer and Mike Neighbors would be interview available if indeed either are interested and Long interested in them.
In his fifth year head coaching Mississippi State after previously being Gary Blair’s top Arkansas assistant and top assistant for Blair’s national champion team at Texas A&M, Schaefer was passed over for the Arkansas job when former Lady Razorbacks’ Athletic Director Bev Lewis and former UA Chancellor John White first blundered by not extending Blair’s contract then blundered again hiring the in SEC over her head Susie Gardner from Austin Peay.
Schaefer just took a 29-3 SEC runner-up Mississippi State team into Sunday’s SEC Tournament championship game against SEC regular season champion South Carolina.
Conceivably, Schaefer’s Bulldogs could have a long run in the upcoming NCAA Women’s Tournament.
Neighbors, apparently overlooked when Long hired Dykes out of the ESPN booth three years ago, is a Greenwood native and former Arkansas high school coach who at Arkansas assisted both Blair and Gardner and now is in his fourth year head coaching the Washington Huskies.
Last season Neighbors’ Huskies went to the Final Four.
At 27-5, Neighbors’ current Huskies could be Final Four material, too.
Any opportunity for Arkansas discussions with either seems worth the wait.
(Nate Allen covers the Razorbacks for the NewsTimes.)