FAYETTEVILLE — Mike Anderson begins this Arkansas Razorbacks’ basketball season embracing the present and forgetting the past.
Quite an irony considering Anderson’s 17-year past as Nolan Richardson’s Arkansas assistant figured so prominently in the UA hiring him away from Missouri last March to become the Razorbacks’ head coach.
But it’s not his Arkansas past that Anderson forgets - or more accurately - passes over without comment. It’s the intervening nine years since Richardson was fired and Anderson passed over and moved on to head coach Alabama-Birmingham and Missouri while Arkansas was coached by Stan Heath and then John Pelphrey.
“What took place here the last few years - that happened,” Anderson said. “Now we are at another point in Razorback basketball history. My goal is to take it to the top.”
The Hogs reached the top during Richardson’s 17 years and Eddie Sutton’s 11 years before that. They won conference championships, advanced to the NCAA Tournament 22 of 28 years with one Final Four for Sutton andthree for Richardson including the UA’s lone basketball national championship and lone national runner-up.
The last nine years added no conference championships and just three NCAA Tournaments, only one advancing to second round.
Yet those lost years Hogs had their moments. Shooting star Rotnei Clarke provided several.
But after a soap opera summer of maybe staying or maybe going, Clarke transferred to Butler University. High-flying forward Glenn Bryant and point guard Jeff Peterson transferred elsewhere, too.
Anderson presses on, neither lamenting their departures as irreplaceable nor posturing parting shots of good riddance.
“I’ve always said,” Anderson said, “I don’t worry about whatI don’t have. We are are going to work with the players that we do have and we are going to work to field a team that is going to be competitive.”
Some departures upon regime change not only are inevitable but mutually beneficial, Anderson learned as part of new regimes at Arkansas, UAB, Missouri and nowArkansas again.
Yet though what mushroomed at Arkansas, UAB and Missouri did so with the players recruited by new regimes, Anderson never forgot that some players Richardson inherited at Arkansas and Anderson inherited at UAB and Missouri did their part setting the table for the bounty to come.
“The potential is there,” Anderson said. “I believe every guy on our team is going to be able to help this basketball team. And they will have that opportunity.”
What he inherits becomes today’s menu on a clean slate.
So senior forward Marvell Waithe, the last man off the Pelphrey bench as a junior college transfer last year, now feels firstrate.
“It’s a relief,” Waithe said. “A clean slate for everybody on this team. The whole environment is different. Coach Anderson is going to bring the best out of me and the best out of each player on this team. I feel this year we have a big chance to make a big impact on the SEC, and I want to be a part of that. Everybody has a little chip on their shoulder this year to be part of something special.”
Sports, Pages 16 on 10/24/2011