Richardson speaks on first year of coaching Hogs

FAYETTEVILLE - While the Razorbacks’ struggling 2-8 football team makes it easy to switch gears to basketball, the Northwest Arkansas Touchdown Club had that decision made anyway with former Arkansas national champion basketball coach Nolan Richardson available to be the club’s last speaker at its Wednesday 2018 finale luncheon at Mermaid’s Restaurant.

Richardson did talk some football though, both as a former player who tried out with the San Diego Chargers and who coached “everything” climbing the ladder from junior high and high school coaching in his native El Paso before winning the national junior college championship coaching Western Texas in Snyder, Texas.

He empathized with what Arkansas firstyear coach Chad Morris endures replacing a coach, Bret Bielema, who employed a completely different system and style that Morris espouses just as Richardson inherited players his first Arkansas season who had played a completely different style and system under Hall of Fame coach Eddie Sutton and went 12-16 in Richardson’s first year.

What Richardson endured, crossing racial barriers as the first black head coach of a major sport in the South while his daughter was dying, doesn’t compare to what any Arkansas coach has endured coaching their first year.

But the changeover basics of contrasting styles seems the same for all.

“It’s very difficult,” Richardson said. “Especially if you have a coach that’s totally opposite from the coach you just had previously. It makes a total difference. If you’ve had smash mouth football and all of a sudden you want to do something different, you don’t have those kind of kids that were recruited. Basketball when you’ve got to run with it, then you’ve got to get some kids that can run. You’ve got to get more athletes. You’ve got to be able to develop the kids that fit the system that you want to run. And sometimes it takes awhile.”

So what does the coach do adjusting what he wants to do with players long coached to do it differently?

“A lot of times what coaches usually do is revert back to what they (the players) are so used to doing,” Richardson said. “Especially in the game of basketball. I remember Eddie was a hard-nosed, man-to-man basketball coach and they spent a lot of times passing the ball, whereas I hated five or six passes. Because that means that sometimes it gets tougher to score.”

So you’ve got players and even fans betwixt and between.

“Fans that are used to that (the previous style) and have seen it be successful,” Richardson said of what he inherited from a Hall of Fame coach. “The team I inherited from Eddie, they were big, and pretty slow, not very athletic. But good kids. They worked hard. They played hard. I had no complaints there. But they weren’t the type of players that I thought could help me win a national championship.”

So what should Morris do?

“I think he can only do what he’s trying to do and put together his best players that he has out on the

field and make something happen,” Richardson said. “And it looks like some of the things they did, particularly in the last ballgame, some things happened.

“That’s good. Make some plays. I think its all about making a play. We’re not a play away. We’re players away. That’s a big difference. It would be different if you needed just two or three good players and you could fix it. Basketball you might need one player that can fix a lot of things. But they are away with athletes and talent. They are not up to the powers of the Alabamas, Auburns, Mississippi State, Ole Miss … they’ve got to get some players.”

Richardson also was asked what he thinks of the current Razorbacks very young basketball team coached by his protege, Mike Anderson.

Anderson lettered two years playing for Richardson at Tulsa and accompanied him to Fayetteville as Richardson’s assistant for 17 years before head coaching AlabamaBirmingham and Missouri and now in his eighth season head coaching the Hogs.

Arkansas is 1-1, losing 73-71 in overtime to heavily favored Texas and then defeating the University of California-Davis 81-58 going into Sunday’s 2:30 p.m. game against the Indiana Hoosiers at Walton Arena.

“I’ve been impressed with the fact that they’re guarding folks,” Richardson said.

“And the key is how hard they compete. When you have a lot of new kids and you can’t get them to play hard, you have a really serious problem even though you have, maybe talent.

“But he’s got them playing hard. And if you have them playing hard and continuing to improve from one game to the next, I expect for them to be a pretty solid ballclub come January or February.”

He was asked about the UA’s plans during the March 2 game with Ole Miss at Walton Arena to honor the 25th anniversary of Richardson’s 1994 national championship team.

“I’m very happy about that,” Richardson said. “Any time you have a team that’s represented this university as national champions, I love to see them get together from time to time to celebrate what they’ve accomplished.”