Fear not, Arkansas vs. Connecticut in the NCAA round of 16 does not require dealing with Kemba Walker, Emeka Okefor or Richard Hamilton, UConn stars in other years.
Nor will Jim Calhoun, coach of the school's NCAA first three men's titles, be staring from the bench when the Huskies and Razorbacks square off Thursday night in the West Regional semifinals. If anything, that game is apt to pale in significance to the other Las Vegas matchup, UCLA vs. Gonzaga, both West Coast teams eyeing the same Final Four berth in Houston April 1.
What's more, Geno Auriemma will not be involved. Posing the biggest challenge to the new world order of college women's basketball ushered in at Tennessee by the late Pat Summitt, Geno still heads a famous program but one increasingly overshadowed by Dawn Staley and South Carolina. Nothing is safe in the women's game if, as it did on Sunday, Ole Miss beats Stanford.
Arkansas, which beat UConn in a season that it also downed Baylor but, in the Big Dance, fell to Wright State, once played for high stakes in women's hoops. But that was when the Artists formerly known as Lady Razorbacks could rebound better than the current edition. Under reduced circumstances, Mike Neighbors' team played in the WNIT second round Monday night as retiring women's coach Lance Harter gets a track named in his honor and softball becomes increasingly viable on the Fayetteville campus.
A new week dawned Sunday with Arkansas people more enraptured than ever with Eric Musselman's men's basketball team. In a game that carried more weight than Arkansas football's December Liberty Bowl win over Kansas, that matching 6-6 teams, the hoop Hogs won, by 72-71 Saturday at Des Moines, Iowa, an instant classic in the West second round.
Earlier beating Illinois, Arkansas pulled off a sweep of teams coached (now or at one time) by Bill Self that stood taller than an Iowa cornfield. It sent Arkansas to the NCAA Sweet 16 for the third-straight year after 24 years removed from camera view in mid-March. A third consecutive Elite Eight would be Arkansas' gift for beating UConn, which rocked Iona (perhaps the last game at that school for Rick Pitino, who might resurface at St. John's) and Saint Mary's in Des Moines.
Whereas Arkansas and Kansas is not a basketball series without much recent history, the buildings get taller as the Razorbacks near March's ultimate madness.
Gonzaga would bring about a rematch with a No. 1 seed from last year (these Zags drew a 3 seed) that Arkansas beat in the Elite Eight, setting about a regional final with Duke that would prove Coach K's final coaching victory.
As for UCLA, Razorback fans with especially deep memories recall beating the Bruins in the 1978 regional semifinals, then stopping Cal State-Fullerton for a ticket to the Final Four in St. Louis. Though the late John Wooden coached his last game nearly 50 years ago, the Bruins have 11 NCAA titles in basketball, Jim Harrick's team humbling Nolan Richardson's would-be repeaters in the 1995 title game in Seattle. Beyond that, Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton, Mike Warren (of TV's "Hill Street Blues" fame), and let us not forget Swen Nater, played for the Wizard of Westwood, for whom (and wife Nell) UCLA named the court at Pauley Pavilion.
If Arkansas clears those hurdles in Vegas, or Musselman doesn't join a band of Elvis imitators, the Final Four at Reliant Stadium could bring about a Southwest Conference reunion with either Houston or Texas. Presuming you know about Arkansas-Texas games in other sports, Houston could send Arkansas against someone who might have been the coach named to succeed the fired Mike Anderson. Hunter Yurachek hired Musselman rather than Kelvin Sampson, and all he has done is take Houston to the brink of its first Final Four since Guy V. Lewis coached Phi Slama Jama.
The April 3 final could bring top seed Alabama or Tennessee in an all-SEC final that seemed illogical at the first of the month, if not an hour ago. Arkansas, a team with double-digit losses, lost to Alabama home and away and at Tennessee. But these Razorbacks appear new and improved, a team that can beat a No. 1 seed in March with only four total points from two key players.
Does this illustrate as our new governor maintains that Arkansas learns?