Patrick’s journey to Arkansas began over a decade ago
FAYETTEVILLE — A fax machine in the Saint Mary's College basketball office 12 years ago started David Patrick's journey to become the University of Arkansas' new top assistant coach.
Razorbacks coach Eric Musselman was between coaching jobs at the time after being fired as head coach of the NBA's Sacramento Kings.
Musselman was living in the San Francisco Bay Area and working as an NBA radio analyst during the 2007-08 season when he frequently visited Saint Mary's practices on the campus in Moraga, Calif.
Gaels coach Randy Bennett and Musselman were friends from their time together at the University of San Diego, where Musselman was a backup guard and Bennett an assistant coach.
Along with stopping by Saint Mary's practices, Musselman often used the fax machine in the coaches' office area.
“Muss would come in all the time to fax out plays to coaches around the country to stay involved in the game,” Patrick said. “The fax machine happened to be in a room next to my office.
“So we'd always talk and I'd pick his brain. That's how we really became close friends.”
That friendship helped Patrick persuade Musselman to join him as an assistant coach at LSU during the 2014-15 season when Johnny Jones was the head coach of the Tigers. Now it has resulted in Musselman hiring Patrick at Arkansas.
Patrick's addition to the UA staff was announced July 1 after he resigned as head coach at the University of CaliforniaRiverside.
The process of deciding to accept Musselman's job offer, Patrick said, took about 10 days.
“It didn't happen overnight,” he said. “There were a lot of phone calls.”
Some of the calls to Patrick were from Musselman. Other calls were from Jones, who is now the coach at Texas Southern, and Stetson assistant coach Brendan Suhr, a longtime NBA assistant coach who worked with Patrick at LSU during the 2015-16 season after Musselman left to become the Nevada head coach.
“When I woke up in the morning, I'd think, ‘I can't leave this situation we have at Riverside because we're so close to a big breakthrough,'” Patrick said. “Then Muss would call me in the morning. Brendan would call me in the afternoon. Johnny would hit me up at night.
“After a few days, I was like, ‘OK, I've got to go to Arkansas. They're telling me too many positives about going.' I just had to convince myself that I wasn't taking a backward step, or a lateral step, and I indeed was taking a step