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FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas’ women’s basketball team will begin a historic four-game, home-and-home series with Arkansas State next season.
According to a copy of the game contract obtained by HawgBeat via an open records request, the Razorbacks will travel Jonesboro on Nov. 19, 2021, to start the series. The Red Wolves will visit Bud Walton Arena during the 2022-23 and 2024-25 seasons, sandwiched around another trip to Jonesboro in 2023-24.
The dates of the last three games in the series have not yet been set.
It is the first time Arkansas has scheduled a regular-season women’s basketball game against Arkansas State since 1983, when the Razorbacks won an 80-47 game in Jonesboro. The two teams did meet in the 2005 WNIT, though, with the Red Wolves winning 98-84.
Arkansas leads the all-time series 5-3, with all but that WNIT game played in the late-1970s and early-1980s.
The resumption of the series was made possible when Hunter Yurachek further loosened Arkansas’ decades-old policy against playing in-state schools this summer. After allowing games against UA system schools - Little Rock and UAPB - two years ago, the Arkansas AD gave the green light for sports other than football to schedule all in-state schools in June.
Not long after that announcement, women’s basketball coach Mike Neighbors said via Twitter he had connected with the head coaches of all four in-state Division I programs and that games were in the works.
Last season, the Razorbacks beat Little Rock 86-53 at Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock. The two schools will play at the venue again this season.
The Arkansas State series is the only contract that has been finalized, but Neighbors previously told WholeHogSports that Arkansas will play all four schools beginning in 2021-22. Those series will include games in Fayetteville, at Simmons Bank Arena and the other schools’ home arenas.
Outside of an exhibition game against Little Rock before last season, the men’s basketball team has not yet scheduled any matchups with in-state schools.
The last time Arkansas played Arkansas State in men’s basketball was in the 1987 NIT, when second-year coach Nolan Richardson - as he later claimed - saved his job with a 67-64 overtime win. It has been more than seven decades since the two schools met in the regular season.
The Razorbacks’ baseball, softball, volleyball and tennis programs have taken advantage of being able to play Little Rock and UAPB, while the football team has scheduled games against UAPB for the 2021 and 2024 seasons.
So far, the only other program to utilize the most recent policy change is volleyball, which is scheduled to play in a tournament at UCA on Sept. 11-12.
