FAYETTEVILLE — After not having a game for nine days, Arkansas’ basketball team will play its first two SEC games within a 42-hour span.
Blame - or credit - the conference’s new television agreement with ESPN.
“It makes it difficult in terms of preparation, especially if your opponent has more time to prepare than you do,” Vanderbilt Coach Kevin Stallings said. “But as a group, our coaches all said we would deal with it, we would handle it, and we understood that sometimes it was going to work in our favor and sometimes it was going to work against us.
“I think in the name of the television package, we all agreed that we would suck it up and do it when it came our way, so that’s what we have to do.”
After being the only SEC team off last weekend, Arkansas (7-8) opens conference play at Mississippi State (13-4, 1-0) at 6 p.m. Thursday for an ESPNU national telecast.
Then the Razorbacks play Alabama (11-4, 1-0) at 12:30 p.m. Saturday in Walton Arena on the SEC Network’s regional telecast.
“It’s not ideal, but it’s a sacrifice you have to make,” Georgia Coach Mark Fox said. “I think we would all be complaining if we didn’t have the TV deal.”
Every SEC team is playing a Thursday night game that will be televised by one of ESPN’s channels, followed by a Saturday game. But Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina have only one with a Thursday night-Saturday turnaround.
Ole Miss is the only team that has as many as four Thursday night-Saturday games, but the Rebels don’t have to do it in back-to-back weeks.
Arkansas is the lone team to have Thursday night-Saturday games in consecutive weeks, and the Razorbacks do it three weeks in a row.
Auburn Coach Jeff Lebo, whose Tigers play at Tennessee on Thursday night and play Kentucky at home Saturday, said he’d always prefer to have at least two days to prepare for a game.
But he added that there’s no sure formula for success when a quick turnaround is involved.
“Sometimes I think it’s good, sometimes I think it’s not good,” Lebo said. “Who knows?”
Arkansas’ assistants are responsible for preparing scouting reports on opponents ahead of time, so the coaching staff will start focusing on Alabama on the return trip from Mississippi State.
“It won’t be a big deal for us as coaches to have a game plan prepared,” Arkansas coach John Pelphrey said. “It will be a little bit more of a challenge for our players because of the short turnaround.”
Pelphrey said he hopes the Razorbacks’ nonconference schedule has prepared them for Thursday night-Saturday games in SEC play considering they twice played three games within six days, played three games within seven days and played three games within eight days.
Razorbacks sophomore guard Rotnei Clarke said intense practices also help.
“We work really, really hard in practice,” Clarke said. “Coach will have us ready for that battle we are going to go through.”
Sports, Pages 20 on 01/12/2010