Again?
Kelvin Sampson chose to stay at Houston rather than move to Arkansas and the SEC. Houston is in the American Athletic Conference. At least when Gus Malzahn and Les Miles played the UA to get raises they stayed at SEC schools.
So Sampson, whose agent got an offer from Arkansas late Monday, opted to stay put. A week after firing Mike Anderson, it appears Hunter Yurachek didn't have all his eggs in one basket and had already set up interviews.
That's good. The Razorback Nation is getting impatient and rightfully so.
The name game is being played on radio shows and most of social media almost by the minute, but the bottom line is not everyone fits, and the last thing the Razorbacks need, besides not making a mistake, is to get used again.
The two hottest names are Eric Musselman, who interviewed yesterday on the UA campus, and Chris Beard.
Musselman, 54, has led Nevada to three consecutive NCAA Tournaments. He's a bit unconventional in that he has built the Wolf Pack with transfers more than recruiting. He's described by many as being extremely intense, but a good coach.
He has coached in the NBA. In fact, he has coached professionally in so many places that when he was last offered a job with the Minnesota Timberwolves and LSU at the same time, his wife Danyelle, a former sports broadcaster, said they were going to Baton Rouge. They did, and one year later he was the head coach at Nevada.
He was raised in a NBA family -- dad Bill was a CBA legend who also coached Cleveland and Minnesota in the NBA -- and spent the first 23 years of his career coaching professionally.
In his first season with the Wolf Pack, who won only nine games the previous season, he led them to an 24-14 record and the CBI championship.
In his second season, Nevada was 28-7 and lost to No. 5 seed Iowa State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Last season the Wolf Pack were 29-8, and as a No. 7 seed knocked off Texas and No. 2 seed Cincinnati before running into an even bigger Cinderella, Loyola-Chicago, coached by Porter Moser, which made the Final Four.
This season they were 29-5 and lost to Florida in the first round. He makes about $1 million a year.
Beard, of course, is a little busy preparing Texas Tech for Michigan State in the semifinals of the Final Four on Saturday, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wouldn't meet Yurachek for a cold beer and hear him out.
Everyone in the world of basketball has become impressed with Beard's coaching ability. The man seems to know what his opponent is going to do before they do. His team executes precisely on offense and defense.
In the last two years Beard stands 7-1 in NCAA Tournament games and 8-2 overall.
According to NCAA statistics it takes an average of 10.4 years experience for a coach to make the Final Four. Beard did it in his fourth year. He made the Elite Eight in his third season.
Many believe he would only consider a change to Texas, his alma mater, but Beard is his own man, and after getting as much info as possible he would decide if Arkansas was right for him. Word has it that the Arkansas bosses want to hear it from him if he's not interested.
Those are two names. There are probably others like Mick Cronin who has taken Cincinnati to nine consecutive NCAA Tournaments and is 365-170 as a head coach. He breathed new life into the Bearcats after Bob Huggins was fired and Andy Kennedy was the interim coach for a year, which basically meant no recruiting for a year.
Stay tuned.
Sports on 04/03/2019