Forty years after wearing a Razorback uniform, Sidney Moncrief received a hero's welcome Saturday at Bud Walton Arena.
Moncrief and fellow Triplets Ron Brewer and Marvin Delph turned on Arkansas, both state and flagship school, to basketball in the 1970s. With Eddie Sutton recruiting three once-in-a-lifetime players from their native state, Arkansas became a national power almost overnight and reached the NCAA Final Four in 1978. Al McGuire, a former college coach (NCAA champion at Marquette) turned broadcaster, coined the phrase "Triplets" during an NBC telecast.
The University of Arkansas retired Moncrief's number, 32, and Sidney (identifiable, like Elvis and Madonna, by first name only) went on to a glorious career in the NBA. He followed that with a not so shimmering record in some other areas, once coaching the school that insists it be called Little Rock, but no matter. One of the most fundamentally sound players of his or any generation, Moncrief will be near and dear to Arkansas people (especially Razorback fans) forever.
Moncrief played at Little Rock Hall for coach Oliver Elders, whose wife became Surgeon General of the United States under President Bill Clinton. Sutton's ability to land Brewer from Fort Smith Northside and Delph from Conway -- their teams packed the house for a 1974 state final at Little Rock's Barton Coliseum, then considered a basketball palace -- sparked immediate interest in the UA program.
Moncrief came aboard a year later, dazzling fans in the 1975 state high school all-star game in Conway, and tickets became scarce at Barnhill Arena (nee Fieldhouse), where seats were of necessity added and quickly snapped up.
If this sounds like ancient history, it's because a saying of Lou Holtz, whose Razorback football teams highballed at the same time as Sutton's basketball squads, bears repeating.
If all you can talk about is what you did yesterday, said Lou, it means you haven't done anything today.
And if ever a Razorback coach needed to change the conversation, it's Mike Anderson, whose basketball Hogs are sinking like the evening sun after the first full week of Southeastern Conference action.
Arkansas is 1-2 in the league, 10-5 overall, after two home losses, its third and fourth of the season at an arena where the Razorbacks were once impregnable. After losses to Florida (9-6, 1-2), 57-51, and LSU (12-3, 2-0), 94-88 in overtime, Anderson's confidence level among Razorback fans sank like a stone. With Arkansas playing Tennessee (14-1, 3-0) and Ole Miss (13-2, 3-0) on the road this week, don't expect immediate improvement.
Arkansas fans want to believe in Anderson's program, especially after an historically bad (2-10) Razorback football season. Anderson, it bears repeating, has never had a losing season, a record that should stay intact in 2018-19, but is polarizing more and more fans who increasingly choose to stay home on game night. From what I'm hearing, some watching the games on TV have become so disgusted that they flip channels early.
The Razorbacks beat Indiana (12-4, 3-2 Big 10) on a November Sunday in Fayetteville but are 4-4 overall since a December road victory at Colorado State (7-10, 2-2 Mountain West). Arkansas never cracked the top 25, where it parked when coached by Sutton or Nolan Richardson, but one could read and hear on the street, as early as December, that the Hogs might be seeded as high as sixth in the NCAA tournament come March.
Arkansas has played more like the team picked 10th in the SEC preseason poll. Rumblings began after home losses to Western Kentucky (8-8, 1-2 Conference USA) and Georgia Tech (10-6, 2-1 Atlantic Coast Conference), both unranked. Any positive feelings taken from a road win over Texas A&M (7-7, 1-2) in the SEC opener Jan. 5 were squashed last week.
Arkansas and Florida laid enough metaphorical bricks Wednesday night to build Donald Trump's wall around Mexico, the Gators going 18 of 58, 31 percent, from the field and the Hogs 15 of 50, 30 percent. Arkansas got 30 points from first-year Razorback Mason Jones, 21 from the others -- and zero from the bench. Isaiah Joe, another first-year Hog, went 2-for-10 and Daniel Gafford, the team's leading scorer, somehow took only two more shots after making the first two baskets.
With fans all but taking out newspaper ads to encourage feeding the ball into Gafford, the sophomore post from El Dorado went 14 of 19 and scored 32 points against LSU. Jones added 22 and Reggie Chaney, off the bench, had 12 in a game Arkansas shot 51.5 percent.
But with Joe's scoring taps turned off (five points, 2-for-5 shooting) and LSU outscoring Arkansas by 21 from 3-point range, fans watching on TV switched to Cowboys vs. Rams football in disgust.
Meanwhile, a coach whose only UALR team won 30 games and reached the second round of the NCAA tournament, has Texas Tech (15-1, 4-0 Big 12) in the top 10 nationally. Chris Beard graduated from Texas, but perhaps Razorback Nation could live with that. Something to consider while you count down the days until Arkansas' baseball season starts.
Sports on 01/15/2019