Balentine's Day
Game in PB 40 years ago remembered
Joe Kleine doesn’t plan on doing anything different from the norm to celebrate Balentine’s Day — not Valentine’s Day.
But each night, he remembers his fallen University of Arkansas basketball teammates — Charles Balentine, Leroy Sutton and Ricky Norton — and Coach Eddie Sutton in his prayers.
“I try to honor them every day by how I act as a human being and how I conduct my life because they were good dudes,” said Kleine, a TV and radio personality who also owns Corky’s Ribs and BBQ in Little Rock and North Little Rock. “God takes the good ones early. He wants them up there with Him, and I firmly believe that.
“I genuinely pray for them and for Coach Sutton. I miss them. I really miss them.”
Feb. 12 is a day remembered for one of Arkansas’ greatest games. On that day in 1984, junior forward Balentine of Newport played the hero as the Razorbacks beat No. 1 and previously undefeated University of North Carolina at the Pine Bluff Convention Center.
The 6-foot-11 Kleine had a big role in that game as Arkansas’ center. He led the Razorbacks with 20 points, making 10 of 10 free throws and pulling down 10 rebounds. Future Olympic teammate and NBA point guard Alvin Robertson had 9 points and 10 assists in the win.
While Kleine and Robertson drew national attention, Balentine’s Day doesn’t unfold without the three late Hogs, Kleine believes.
“Those guys were as much a part and important to that team as Alvin and I were,” Kleine said. “They were all different in personalities, but they were steady.”
The 40th anniversary of the game, which is Monday, comes less than a
year since Balentine’s death Aug. 2 at age 60. He played under Eddie Sutton at Arkansas from 1981-85 and averaged 7.9 points and 3.8 rebounds for his career, according to his obituary. The Sacramento Kings drafted him in 1985.
PINE BLUFF BEAMING
Since its opening the week before America’s 200th birthday in 1976, the 7,620-seat Convention Center has attracted big names in entertainment like Dionne Warwick and Elvis Presley, although it has given way to newer arenas in recent years.
A big reason for the Convention Center’s prominence was that Pine Bluff is a midway point between Dallas and Memphis, which had yet to open their own palaces in Reunion Arena and The Pyramid, respectively — with the American Airlines Center and FedEx Forum still to come.
The Razorbacks played regularly inside the Convention Center from its opening until the 1992-93 season, the year before Bud Walton Arena opened on the UA campus. It was common practice for the Hogs, a perennial power in the Southwest Conference at the time, to entertain a large portion of their fanbase that otherwise might not make the 200-plus-mile trek to Fayetteville.
“Being recruited, I did not know about Little Rock or Pine Bluff,” said Kleine, a Missourian who began his college career at the University of Notre Dame and transferred to Arkansas after one season. “When I got here and I realized geographically where Arkansas was, playing in Pine Bluff and Little Rock, playing over Christmas break certainly made sense. It made a lot of sense because of how rabid the fans were. Fayetteville had rabid fans, too, but the students wouldn’t be there, so I know Pine Bluff was a marvelous arena.”
Like Barnhill Arena, the UA’s home venue before Walton, seating at the Convention Center was tight and the fans gave Kleine the feeling they were right on top of the players, he said.
“It was really loud and a hard place to play because of the proximity of the fans and how into the game they were,” he said.
With North Carolina coming and helping attract an arena-record 7,529 fans, it was another good reason for Pine Bluff to beam on national television.
Long before the days of streaming video, only the best college basketball matchups aired on limited cable packages of the 1980s, if not on network television. NBC, which hasn’t broadcast the NCAA tournament since 1981, was still a top source for college games, and the network’s top announcer team of Dick Enberg and Al McGuire got the nod to call the action between the Tar Heels and Razorbacks.
Few in Pine Bluff might have been certain they would witness a future superstar in North Carolina junior Michael Jordan, but he had already left clues.
Jordan was in the middle of a National Player of the Year campaign when North Carolina came to Pine Bluff with a 21-0 record. His star was born two years earlier in New Orleans when he sank the go-ahead shot in the Tar Heels’ 63-62 national championship win over Georgetown University.
THE WEEKEND
Going into the weekend before Valentine’s Day, neither Jordan nor UNC was the Razorbacks’ biggest worry.
Arkansas first had to take on Southern Methodist University in Dallas for a key SWC game. The Hogs won 80-71 on Feb. 11.
“Before we left to go to Dallas, that’s all we talked about, beating SMU,” Balentine said in a 2014 interview with The Commercial. “… In order to be in second place, we had to beat SMU.”
The Hogs were to fly into Pine Bluff that night, but tornadoes had broken out in Central Arkansas, according to Kleine, and that kept the team in the Big D until the next morning.
Arkansas didn’t show up until 2 hours before game time, Balentine recalled, enduring what he called the worst flight he had ever been on.
“We were still queasy from that trip,” he said. “We just had breakfast, and it wasn’t great. Coach said, ‘Get out there on the floor and shoot.’ We were just trying to get our legs under us.”
The Tar Heels, according to Balentine, had been in Pine Bluff since Feb. 10, coming off an 85-72 win at the University of Virginia. Their standout freshman point guard, current TNT personality Kenny “The Jet” Smith, was missing in action with a broken wrist, forcing Hall of Fame Coach Dean Smith to move freshman Steve Hale of Jenks, Okla., into the starting lineup.
Jordan and Hale started in the backcourt, with seniors Sam Perkins and Matt Doherty at the forwards and sophomore Brad Daugherty at the center. Arkansas started Balentine and Leroy Sutton at the forwards, Kleine at center and Norton and Alvin Robertson at the guards.
Jordan and Perkins would win gold with Kleine and Robertson on Team USA in Los Angeles and went on to solid NBA careers, adding to the game’s star billing.
“You had two heavyweight programs with two heavyweight coaches,” Kleine said. “When you have those two things, you’re going to have some really good players. Arkansas has always had really good players, and certainly North Carolina has. When those first two things come together, you’re going to have good players on the floor. There were a whole bunch of them that day.”
North Carolina also had the benefit of another soon-to-be heavyweight. Roy Williams, who led the Tar Heels to national titles in 2005, 2009 and 2017, was one of Smith’s assistants.
40 INTENSE MINUTES
The game was Arkansas’ third in four days — the Hogs won at Texas A&M University 59-58 on Feb. 9 — and it was very intense from the beginning, Kleine remembers.
“That whole game felt like the last 2 minutes of the game, the whole game,” he said. “Every shot seemed massive. Every defensive stop seemed massive. It just felt like the last 2 minutes of the game, but it lasted 40 minutes. It was a very intense game.”
Jordan missed his first field-goal attempt from the foul line, and Balentine and Kleine were there to reject his shot on a drive down the baseline. Jordan would take flight with a two-hand alley-oop jam in the early going.
Arkansas, which trailed 5-0, raced to a 36-29 lead. Sutton made a heavily contested shot on the baseline to give Arkansas a 38-34 edge, the score at halftime. Kleine’s jumpshot at the buzzer would not rattle in.
Each team shot 50% from the floor in the first 20 minutes. The Hogs expanded their lead to 46-36, only for UNC to claw back and go in front, 58-57.
Jordan made a baseline jumper with 1:13 left to give the Tar Heels a 64-63 lead. He scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half.
Without a shot clock in effect, the Hogs ran the clock down to 29 seconds left before calling timeout near their bench.
“I was always the inbound man,” Balentine said in 2014. “We drew that play up. The plan was to clear out and let Alvin take Steve Hale one-on-one. When Alvin got the ball, they immediately double-teamed him.”
Robertson was trapped and kicked the ball out to Norton at the point. Robertson then took a pass at the left wing and saw Balentine flash from the left corner. Balentine stopped the pass from going out of bounds and hit a 5-foot bankshot with 4 seconds left.
Two more seconds ran off the clock before game officials could give North Carolina a timeout. Meanwhile, Balentine and the Hogs were jumping for joy, even before the Tar Heels could take one last crack at victory. (The clock now stops after a made basket in the final minute of the second half or overtime.)
With a second added on the clock, Doherty rifled a pass to Perkins near midcourt and Perkins yelled for timeout to set up a half-court play for the final 2 seconds. (Game clocks at the time did not display tenths of a second.)
Press row was so close to the sideout line, Doherty inbounded the ball on the line and Arkansas’ Robert Brannon was forced to give him 3 feet of room.
Hale took the inbound pass at the left corner, turned to his back shoulder and fired a shot as McGuire, the 1977 championship coach at Marquette University, yelled: “It’s good!”
Instead, it clanked off the rim at the horn. Arkansas won, 65-64.
“Pandemonium in Pine Bluff!” proclaimed Enberg, adding to his list of classic calls.
That it was. The rabid fans flash mobbed the court, Coach Sutton and McGuire hidden among the pack for only NBC to find.
Perkins scored 17 points (12 in the first half) and Hale 15 for UNC. Darryl Bedford scored 12 points, Leroy Sutton 11 and Balentine 10 for Arkansas.
Arkansas shot 55.8% from the floor and 77.3% in free throws. North Carolina went 44% from the floor and 87% at the line. Each team shot 50% from the floor in the first half.
Although some conferences had experimented with a 3-point line earlier in the decade, there was none in this game. The NCAA did not make the arc standard until the 198687 season.
AFTERMATH
The win was Arkansas’ fourth out of seven in a row. The streak ended with a loss at the University of Houston, the eventual national runner-up. Arkansas lost again to Houston in the SWC tournament final, then was ousted in the second round of the NCAA tournament by Virginia, which staged a Cinderella run to the Final Four and lost in overtime to Houston.
Leroy Sutton, 59, and Eddie Sutton, 84, both died within a five-day span in May 2020. Eddie Sutton, who guided Arkansas to a Final Four in 1978, left to coach at the University of Kentucky, then Oklahoma State University (where he led the Cowboys to two Final Fours) and retired from the University of San Francisco in 2008.
Norton died in 2022 at age 61.
“It makes you very sad, and it makes you very aware of good people who are not going to be around for long,” Kleine said. “You need to stay in contact with them and stay present in their lives because you don’t know when you’re going to lose good people.”
Balentine enjoyed a long career in retail management, according to his obituary. At the time of his death, he was working as a senior district manager and head of retail operations for Coulson Oil’s Road Runner convenience stores.
The King Cotton Holiday Classic, the annual high school basketball tournament at the Convention Center, honored Balentine by presenting a crystal trophy to his widow, Marie. His mother Fran was among those in attendance, with Kleine giving her a hug on the court, not far from where her son saved the day almost 40 years earlier.
“I took my son down there to the King Cotton Classic, and I was telling him, ‘You know on this floor, there were six No. 1 [first-round] draft picks. One of them was the GOAT,” Kleine said, giving Jordan the moniker “greatest of all time.”
But in Arkansas, Balentine is a timeless hero.
“Charles was an everyday guy,” Kleine said. “You didn’t have to worry about his effort, his attitude, being on time. He handled his business. He was a great guy to play with. … Guys like that are coaches’ dreams because they do their job, and they do it well.”