Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer and former Arkansas head coach Nolan Richardson is a giant in the world of basketball. He brought the Razorbacks their only national championship in 1994, its patented "40 Minutes of Hell" playing style and to date, he is still the only coach to win a junior college national championship, the NIT championship and the NCAA Tournament national championship.

As his reputation easily speaks for itself, the legend of Richardson remains among the largest in the sport, despite not actively coaching for years. Between the time Richardson took the head coaching job at Arkansas in 1985 to now, many stories have made their way across the state about the kind of coach and person Richardson is — hard-nosed, aggressive, full of tough love — but ultimately, he is a winner on and off the court.

In wanting to provide a written record of some of these amazing stories of the most legendary figure in Arkansas basketball history, HawgBeat aimed to compile a list of oral accounts from Richardson's former players and coaches, discussing their favorite memory, most important lessons learned and one thing they would tell Richardson.

Over the course of talking to these former players and coaches, the initial three-question angle expanded. These integral figures in Richardson's life and career made asides, stating that certain facts must be known and certain stories must be told.

As a result, over the course of six months, HawgBeat compiled over 20 hours worth of interviews with former Razorbacks of all different roles.

Leading scorers, role players, walk-ons, assistant coaches — each experience unique, but similar as a whole. There was no shortage of love and respect for Richardson, and no shortage of admiration in how he navigated the endless struggles he did.

Because this piece continued growing, many quotes had to be cut for spacing. Each figure who was interviewed is featured in this piece, but not every answer is given in its entirety. Those might see the light of day in a bigger project down the road.

For now, enjoy a walk down memory lane, read stories that are largely unknown by the public, and hear from some Hog legends and fan favorites — some of which the fanbase might not have heard from in years.

If you are a former manager, assistant, or player under Nolan Richardson and would like to share some of your own personal experiences and memories, please contact Jackson Collier at jacksoncollierauthor.com or on X at @JacksonCollier.

“Well, probably my first impression is probably one of my favorite ones. I played for Jefferson State Junior College out of Birmingham, Alabama, and we were one of those teams that had kinda got hot in 1980, and Coach Richardson was coaching at Western Texas Junior College. Obviously, his team was one of the top junior college teams in the country, and here we are playing against this great team and this coach comes out — very flashy, open-collar shirt, gold necklace, booming voice, I mean built like an Atlas dude. And here we are playing against them. His demand and how his team played, it impressed me so much.

“They beat us in the junior college championship game, and I was so impressed with him being in that position as a head coach. He was one of the first black head coaches at the junior college level in the state of Texas. Then he got the job at the University of Tulsa, and I couldn’t beat him, so I joined him. The rest has been history.

“What people don’t realize is that I’ve been probably a part of all the championships that he’s won. He won the junior college championship game, I’m playing against him. The very next year, we go to Tulsa and he takes four guys off that team — Paul Pressey, David Brown, Greg Stewart and Phil Spradling — and myself off the other junior college team, and we won the NIT championship against Syracuse at the University of Tulsa. That’s two championships. Then, of course, I was on staff as associate head coach at Arkansas when we won the National Championship. The guy is just a winner, man, in all aspects, and obviously he’s had a tremendous impact on my life.”

“I would probably say one of my favorite memories of Coach (Richardson) was the day of the National Championship game. We were preparing for, obviously, one of the biggest games in our lives and of his career. You know, we had a shootaround time, each year, each team gets 45 minutes to shoot around before the game, whether it’s a walk-through, just time to get shots up or what have you.

“We played in Charlotte Coliseum, and back then you didn’t have the concourse level being on the second level, it was on the ground floor. Coach would always give us time to hang out in the locker room for a few minutes. We didn’t always start right at the time, he’d kind of let us get loose or hang out in the locker room, laughing or joking a bit. I remember myself, Elmer Martin and Corliss Williamson were in the locker room just hanging out for a few minutes, and then the managers came in and said, ‘Hey, Coach said get ready to go.’ So, we ran out there to the floor, and lo and behold, I didn’t realize the getting 'ready to go' was getting ready to pack up, because they had messed our times up, and so we only had like three minutes left on the clock by the time myself, Corliss and Elmer Martin hit the floor.

“Guys were taking some crazy shots. I look up at the clock and think, ‘Dang, we only got three minutes left,’ and at this time I’m looking for Coach (Richardson), Coach Anderson is on the floor, coach Brad Dunn is on the floor, coach Wayne Stehlik is off to the side of the floor just kind of looking a little bit confused, and I could just hear Coach Richardson’s voice. You gotta keep in mind, the president’s coming to the game, so you’ve got the Secret Service doing their sweep of the gym, you’ve got CBS setting up their TV monitors, you’ve got every media outlet that you can think of in there trying to get ready for the game as we were.

“You can just hear Coach Richardson going off on pretty much anybody he came into contact with. A lot of people thought that he was upset, which he was, but I don’t think he was as upset as he led people to believe, because the moment we get on the bus to leave, he just started going back to what our mantra had been all year, which was: ‘Nobody feels like we’re the best team in the country, nobody feels like we should be here, it’s us against the world.’

“That day, people don’t really know, we didn’t get the opportunity to have an actual shootaround and game prep besides what we would do at the hotel. We went out and played that game with that in mind. Nobody felt that we should be there. Nobody thought we were good enough to be there, nobody thought we were the best team in the country, but in our minds, we begged to differ.

“I’ll always remember him having that chip on his shoulder throughout his career, but that particular day I think he used that as fuel for us to give us the confidence to go out and compete at the level we did. And fortunate for us we were able to come out on the top side of it.”

“Coach Richardson went to Texas Western College, and I went to, as an assistant, New Mexico Military Institute the same year. We were in the same conference for three years. When Coach got the Tulsa job, he hired me at 24 years old to be a graduate assistant at the University of Tulsa.

“I drive from New Mexico, get to Tulsa, and Coach said, ‘Things have changed. I had to make a change on the staff, now you have a chance to be a full time assistant, but I can only pay you half a salary.’ Tulsa had no money, no money back then. So, there was Coach, there was Andy Stoglin, and then it was me. And when he said, ‘I have no money,’ he split a salary and gave me half and hired a secretary. So, I went from a kid who was elated leaving New Mexico to be a grad assistant at a Division I school, to being, at that time, 24 years old and probably one of a handful of the youngest Division I full-time assistants.

“I think he split a salary of $15,000 to $7,500. I think that’s what I made at Tulsa my first year. So I was with Coach at TU. I was on the bench of the Division I rapid escalation of Coach Richardson. I guess I did a good job for him, he brought me with him to the University of Arkansas. It was five years Tulsa, six years Arkansas. All in all, I was with Coach 11 years.”

In the interview, it was noted that 11 years was quite the amount of time for an assistant to be with a coach, and that doesn’t seem as common this day and age.

“See, that’s a testament to him,” Edgar said. “A lot of times after a couple of years, head coaches will say, ‘Okay, it’s time for you to go, I’ve got to get new people in here, fresh ideas in here.’ Or, ‘Hey, somebody’s promised me a player and I’m going to hire him to bring the player and it’s best you move on.’ He’s all about family. The word is family.

“Mike (Anderson) will tell you about family. Mike played for us at Tulsa. Mike then came along and volunteered here at some form or fashion, helped Coach with (his daughter) Yvonne a lot early on, and when the opportunity came, Mike became a full-time assistant.

“I was there for the 1990 Final Four, and the last group I helped him assemble was the Corliss (Williamson), Scotty (Thurman) and Corey Beck group that darn-near went back-to-back.”

The two of us then bantered back and forth a bit about how difficult it is to go back-to-back, and the unbelievable run Arkansas went on in the six years from 1990-95.

“It was a (Final) Four, it was an (Elite) Eight, then when Lee (Mayberry) and Todd (Day) and them were seniors, they stubbed their toe against Memphis,” Edgar said. “I played them then, in the game before, actually. I was at Murray State then.

“I left for Murray in August, and in March they turn around and throw me up against Coach in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. It was more emotional and drama-filled than any matchup between assistant and master ever. The emotion pregame, during the game and postgame was epic.

“When the game’s done, the (Arkansas) players hug me, then they run to the stands and hug my wife. My press conference brought me to tears, and Coach’s press conference — this is the public Coach Richardson. Not the behind the scenes Coach that had a huge tenderness and soft spot. The public Coach Richardson, his press conference brought him to tears. Then, two years later, they’re there."

“I don’t want to say ‘favorite’, but a time that I can remember that kind of sticks out is just running Cleveland Hill, and he’s in the car behind us honking the horn. Just pushing us, messing with us mentally. Saying stuff like, ‘Yeah, this air conditioner feels real good in here’ while we were running.

“He’s Coach. You shouldn’t expect anything else. He’s gonna make you uncomfortable, mess with you mentally, see if you’re mentally tough to push through it, it’s just part of it. It was just Coach being Coach.”

“I’ve got so many stories and so many feelings about Coach Richardson, and I think they’re all different because we all had different backgrounds growing up. It’s easy when people can impact certain backgrounds, you know? Some coaches are great with players who don’t have fathers, some coaches are great with players coming from affluent homes and can deal with that side of it, but Coach Richardson was able to impact everybody, no matter what your background growing up was. The teams I was on had all levels of that. I just don’t think any other coach could put all that together and make it work.

“I’ll give you both: there was one game and we were playing… I can’t exactly remember who it was, but we were probably down 20 at halftime, and we came back into that locker room and Coach — you know back then we had the chalkboards, you didn’t have the pretty little Expos and all that — Coach was so hot. He was going off on us. And when Coach is talking, it’s silence, you know, because he’s coming at us. We’re not fixing to say anything and he’s reading it to everybody: me, Lee (Mayberry), Todd (Day), O (Oliver Miller) — it didn’t matter if you averaged 30 or if you averaged three, he was ripping everybody.

“He jumped up and kicked the chalkboard, and he and the chalkboard went down! Back then you had the stall lockers, and you’re leaning out in the stall, but you know if you leaned back, you know Coach wouldn’t be able to see you because it reached out. Everybody went back because they did not want to laugh, because if you would’ve laughed, he probably would’ve whooped your butt. I mean, it was so funny. Me and Todd were next to each other and I’m hitting Todd on the foot, he’s hitting me, and we’re trying not to laugh because you know, now he’s gotta get up!

“He got up, and he continued to light us up. Nobody laughed, but it was the funniest thing. We went out and won by about 15. I mean, he hit that chalkboard, I think he kicked it, and he fell and it went down with him, and it was just so funny — but Lee and Arlyn (Bowers) were right up there at the front. And Arlyn’s like the funniest guy on the team, but for Truck (Bowers) not to say something… but now that we’re older, we definitely talk about that.

“Another one: one time he was letting us know how tough he was because he played football, basketball and baseball and did all that. He was trying to insinuate how tough we needed to be, playing and he said, ‘If you ever catch me in a fight with a bear, you better help the bear.’ And everybody, behind his back, we’d say, ‘That’s the bear! Don’t mess with the bear!’

“You get that side of it, but there’s a couple I’m gonna give you. Like, I was from Houston, Lenzie (Howell), Big O from Dallas, Roosevelt (Wallace) — a lot of guys weren’t from Oklahoma, Memphis, and even Memphis was a four or five hour trip. Tulsa is like two hours away. Mario (Credit)s from Missouri. We had guys — (Robert) Shepherd was from Chicago — we had guys who were far away from home. But every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, Mama (Rose) Richardson would cook at the house. Where I’m from, when you do Thanksgiving and Christmas, all our families are there. 20, 30, 40 people, that’s just what we do. And that’s what Coach did.

“Of course, our first year, all we know of Coach is, ‘Man, that’s Coach. That’s the Bear. We ain’t fixing to — I don’t want to go over there!’ But Mama Richardson would call him ‘Flaco.' That’s the name she would call him was ‘Flaco,' and she would tell him, ‘You are not Coach Richardson. Leave them boys, leave my babies alone.’ And you saw a whole different side of Coach. We’re sitting down with Coach watching the football game. And he’s not being Coach, it’s kind of like he’s your uncle, or he’s like your dad in some instances. He’s telling jokes — I mean, Coach Richardson telling jokes. Like, we’d all crack on each other, and Truck was the best, but you’ve got Coach Richardson doing it to ALL of us. And we were like, ‘Who is this guy?’ That was every Thanksgiving and every Christmas, and it meant a lot to us. Like I said, I was 10 hours away.”

“I’ve gotta say, I’ve got two. Of course, the first one, from a professional perspective, the night we won the national championship, and as soon as the horn sounds there was kind of a spontaneous hug between Coach and I. And it was just a chance for me to quickly say, ‘Thanks for bringing me on this journey.’ It just happened. And you know, a lot of folks have seen that and it’s been commented on, but that’s probably one of the favorite things professionally that I’ve experienced with him.

“A second part, my parents passed away 12 years ago, very closely. My dad, when my wife and I got married, my dad was our best man. When my dad passed, somehow somebody called Coach about it and let him know and within a few hours he called me up. He went out of his way to make sure that somebody on his team… he called me up. He asked how I was doing, he sent his regards and his best wishes. That stays with me because it shows that it’s not about the wins and losses, it’s about the people, and I lived that firsthand with him when he made that phone call.”

“The Texas game in 1990 when he walked out, he was mad and he wanted to, I think, attack. He knew we had been beating Texas every time, and he thought it wasn’t going our way. Texas had a great team, and it wasn’t going our way, we were about to get beat and he decides, ‘I’ve had enough,’ and he takes off. It was shocking!

“There I was, and Dave England said, ‘Go let Coach in,’ and I was like, ‘What?’ He’s going, heading out in front of Texas’ bench. I go back there and I follow him and as we were walking back over to the tunnel, there were all the Texas fans. They didn’t know what was going on, but the place was full. They had a big arena — it didn’t fill up much — it filled up for No. 3 ranked Arkansas. We’re walking through there, and I’ll never forget those people yelling and screaming at him. Just angered, and he didn’t say a word, he just walked out.

“He threw his coat off. I grabbed his coat, hung it up on a hook, asked if he needed anything, he didn’t say anything and I went back out. We make this crazy comeback, and Lee Mayberry makes this crazy shot, which I thought was a halfcourt shot, it wasn’t. I go flying back into the locker room, and I was like, ‘Coach, Lee hit one from almost halfcourt, they didn’t foul him, we were down three.’ Three-pointers had just started right before that. I said, ‘He drilled a three right on top of him, we’re going to overtime, let’s go!’

“He grabbed his coat and we ran back out there. We smacked ‘em in overtime. Smacked ‘em. We were just a lot better than them. We’re walking back through that dang tunnel, and those people are leaving, the fire he had coming off that court — and he didn’t say a word — he was just pointing at them. He knew. There’s film of it. He knew. He didn’t say a word to them.

“We got into that locker room, and he was so fired up in that locker room. He wasn’t a jump up and down, hug everybody, he wasn’t a huge rah-rah guy in that respect, but he was a very, very intense guy.”

“There are a few that are tough to talk about right now just with Miss Rose passing away, and some stuff around that. But my freshman year, we were kind of coming together as a team in 1999-2000, and we had gotten to the point in the regular season where our regular season record was not going to get us into the NCAA Tournament. I think we had three or four games left in the regular season. We showed up to practice like a normal practice and Coach let us know that the regular season was over, it didn’t matter anymore, that we were going to win the SEC Tournament.

"Mind you, three or four games left in the regular season, you’re beat up, you’re tired, we haven’t had a great year, there’s some promise there because you’ve got Joe Johnson, you’ve got some other guys playing well, and Coach just decides, ‘Hey, we’re gonna do two-a-days,' which is insane. Nobody does two-a-days with three or four games left in the regular season. So we had two full weeks of two-a-days going into the SEC Tournament, and it was brutal. It was hard, but you saw this team overcome that, he kind of saw that we were coming together but we just needed to say, ‘Hey, this isn’t going to work’ and go all-in on the SEC Tournament.

“If you watch those games, those last four or five games of the regular season, you keep seeing us getting a little better and a little better and a little better. We almost won at Kentucky, who was really good. Tayshaun Prince, Jamaal Magloire, Keith Bogans. They had four or five NBA guys on that team who were good. We almost beat them at Kentucky. (The Wildcats were ranked No. 18 for that matchup, and the Razorbacks lost by five, 60-55 in Rupp Arena.) And then we finished the regular season off (by) beating Auburn at home, and Auburn was a Top-10 team at the time, maybe Top-5, and then went into that SEC Tournament and kind of the rest is history. To this day, it’s the only one we’ve got as a school.”

The friendship between Richardson’s players spans eras, with Eddins receiving good-natured jabs from friends on the national championship team about the SEC Tournament championship.

“My buddies that were on the national title team like to make fun of me because I’ll say ‘It’s the best championship in the history of Arkansas basketball,’ but him taking us and saying, ‘Hey, I think we’ve got something here’ and really pushing us those two weeks — and I remember being in the locker room and everyone complaining, being like, ‘This is crazy, what are we doing?’ He knew something we didn’t, and we got there, Joe (Johnson) played great, Brandon Dean played out of his mind and was MVP, Teddy Gibson had a really underrated tournament that I think a lot of people have forgotten about.

"A couple weeks before that tournament I dove in practice and almost broke TJ Cleveland’s ankle, and somehow miraculously he was able to play in that tournament and played great for us. We just really came together as a team and I think — you know, he didn’t change anything. We weren’t running new plays, we weren’t doing anything — he just put a little bit of that Nolan magic into us, and came out with that tournament win. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the NCAA Tournament, I think we were dead, and I think it showed in that Miami game (in the First Round), and Miami had a senior-laden team, but looking back, as hard as that three-week stretch was, it was something that was very memorable.

"And to go to Atlanta and do that at a time when people were talking about maybe replacing him as coach after all he’d done, and to be able to win that. Twenty five years later this year for it to still be the only time we’ve done it in school history is something that’s really special to our group and something we’ll never forget.”

“Basketball-wise, I think it was February of 1989 when we played Texas at home and they were real good. They had (Lance) Blanks and (Travis) Mays and (Joey) Wright and (Alvin) Heggs. We ended up beating them, kind of going away at the end, but it was a really close game. Todd Day dunking on Heggs, just the crowd going wild, they used to have Jim Robken I think was his name as the band director. Man, he kept the fans up the whole game, they’d have the noise thing that lit up on timeouts. That was a cool time for me.

“Non-basketball would be more as an adult. A little over eight years ago our youngest daughter passed away from Ulcerative Colitis. Just, Coach reaching out to me, he called me several times just to touch base, seeing how I was doing, you know because he had gone through the same thing with Yvonne and then one of his sons. That was probably more special to me because I didn’t stay the full four years, I transferred out after a year and a half and we had kind of reconnected as adults and he had done some coaching clinic stuff for me — I used to coach girls basketball summer team type stuff — but him reaching out and checking on me when, honestly, he didn’t have to. That was probably the most human thing, you know, that he could do. Just showing me that he loved me and that he still cared about me after all these years."

“The first couple years I was struggling with playing time, and Coach gave me a chance again my junior year. I ended up playing way more, started 12 games, so I had his confidence. He never gave up on me, you know, and he saw me working hard, and he was always — not just to me — but he was always rewarding players that worked hard in practice, he would try to give them playing time in the games. We couldn’t really afford to have players on the roster not getting into the game because of the playing style.”

“When I hugged Coach my last home game in Fayetteville. It was just a night to remember, man. I think we beat Baylor that night, and won our third conference championship, and that embrace, when we embraced each other that last go ‘round, there was just something about that. That memory, that day, that hug, all the life lessons that he taught me that turned me into the man I am today, knowing that he just helped shape me. Nolan Richardson is just a really good dude, just coming from where I came from, he was able to understand. He understood where a lot of the players he coached came from. We were able to relate to Coach Richardson."

“I still laugh — it was the 1992 NCAA Tournament when we played North Carolina in East Rutherford, New Jersey. We’re having a pre-game meal and sitting in a conference room at the Marriott, and Coach got up there and started telling a story about how bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly based on the size of its wings. As he was drawing a picture of a bumblebee, he didn’t realize that he drew it with a sharpie as opposed to the dry-erase marker. So, somewhere in East Rutherford, New Jersey there’s a dry-erase board that’s still got a bumblebee that can’t fly. Unfortunately we didn’t win the game, but it was a good story.

“The other funny part of the story — Coach had a tendency to make up words, which we all do. And I think in his story he intended to say that aeronautically it shouldn’t be able to fly, but I think he used the word, ‘astrotomically’ it should not be able to fly.”

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“I think, probably, you know, I was one of the few guys who actually had a chance to play for him and then coach with him, and then of course had the opportunity to go and head up my own program. I think one of the things that I got from that is ‘Be who you are.’ You know, you can’t be Nolan Richardson, you can’t be Dean Smith, you can’t be this guy — be who you are. And I think that’s the lesson that I learned from him: stay true to who you are. With that being said, it’s something that I use in my life and in my coaching career. Just tried to stay true to who I was.”

“He taught me a lot of life lessons, I don’t know if this one is the biggest one but it’s the one I kind of live by each and every day. We used to practice at 6:00 a.m. (at Arkansas). Coming out of high school — we did that maybe one time in high school — but I thought that was like the craziest thing ever to have a 6:00 a.m. practice. Especially since you’re not going to play any games at 6:00 a.m.

"I would literally — myself, Corliss, and my other teammates — would literally sleep in our practice gear, because when you think about it, you start practice at 6:00, but that means you’ve got to get up at 5:00, get up and get prepared to go. If you’re gonna eat some breakfast, you’ve got to do that, and so I used to think that was like the most horrific thing to have to go through.

“Now fast-forward, I’m 49, about to be 50, and now I can’t sleep past 5:00 or 5:30. So I’ve always prided myself on the early bird gets the worm, and that was kind of his deal. You get up, you get ready, and you’ve done more before the average person has done, and in that case we were playing basketball. We had done more than any team in the country had done. That was our mindset. We were getting up, getting prepared and getting better while everyone else was asleep.

“Now, my day to day preparation, not just when I’m coaching, but in life, I just get up and do everything I can to get prepared for the day, and I take pride in having done a majority of my busy work things before 10 or 11 o’clock. While everyone else is getting their coffee at 8:30 and maybe have gotten an hour, hour and a half of work, my busy list is pretty much checked off. So, I think for me that’s been one of the most instrumental things in my life, you know, my wife, she’s an early riser, my kids, they’re early risers, though not as early as me.

“Just the preparation that comes into play. Then on the flip side of that, it requires you to have some discipline to make sure you go to bed, because that alarm clock goes off fairly quickly. He did it because he didn’t want us hanging out all times of the night, because he knew that we would get up. So, that’s just one of the things that’s been an integral part of my life, trying to be ready to go and ahead of the game rather than behind it.”

“Tough times make tough people. Just going through adversity and being able to persevere through it, it enables you to get through anything in life if you can push through something and persevere. That was the thing I learned from Coach, man, he put us through a lot, as far as physically and mentally, to push us to our limits to see if we can get through."

“One of the biggest things that I gained from him was attitude. When you look at where he came from, it would’ve been real easy for him to take a different path in his life, based on his upbringing and where he came from and people he was around. But his attitude was always kind of ingrained by his grandmother, and he was going to be a success. And you just look at his track record and every place he went he was successful. I think that’s because of his attitude.

"He made comments to coaches and players sometimes — you know, we’d practice at six in the morning quite often — and of course the kids didn’t want to do it, and even the coaches weren’t really fond of it, but he’d always say, ‘Who else in the country is practicing at six o’clock? And if someone told me I could win a championship if we started at four o’clock, or five o’clock, or six o’clock, I’m going to do it because I want to win.’

"But that was his attitude. And that carried over into our players. I just think one of the best things that I learned from him was that your attitude is how you get up in the morning, it’s how you go to work, and if you’ve got a positive attitude, things will work out. And if you’re a negative Nelly or a negative energy person, you’re going to experience that, too.”

“Absolutely,” Zimmerman said when asked if the biggest lesson he took away from Richardson was his ability to respond to adversity and tragedy.

“I’ve lost a lot of people, as we all have, but I have not lost a parent or a sibling or anything until this past September. Coach Richardson called me from the hospital. I was at Conway Regional, he knew that my dad was passing and it was getting close. And he called me and we’re talking, and all the success he’s had, as we’re talking, he was just so compassionate toward me. My dad was 94, and he (Richardson) said, ‘Man, he lived such a long life, it’s beautiful.’

“One of Coach’s parents had died when he was like four, and his other parent died when he was around 16. He lost his parents so young, and here I am all upset over my 94-year-old father passing away. He was just talking about how lucky I was. He didn’t say he wasn’t lucky, he just said, ‘You’re so fortunate to have had your dad that long.’

“It’s amazing. This guy’s had all this success, fought through all this adversity, he’s had to go through the death of his daughter (Yvonne), he had to go through the death of his son (Nolan Richardson III), he’s had to go through all this death and suffering, and look at the incredible success he’s had.”

Life added to that list of tragedy on October 14th, 2024 when Richardson’s beloved wife, Rose, passed away.

“Perseverance. If you really look at his life, if you go back and look at pictures of him in that Texas Western jersey and see that kid, and think about what that kid went through at a very young age, people can’t comprehend in the year 2024 a kid having to sneak into Mexico to be able to go to a movie theater. Because in El Paso he was not allowed to go into a movie theater.

"He could score 30 points in a game for Don Haskins at Texas Western, and on the bus ride home they’d have to bring him food out to the bus because they wouldn’t let him in the restaurant. Think about all he went through throughout his entire life. He lost a daughter when he first got to Arkansas and things weren’t going well, and people are calling for him to be fired while his daughter is dying right in front of him.

"To really take in the full body of his entire life and how he continued time and time again to persevere and overcome obstacles, some of which 99.9% of the people out there wouldn’t have stood a chance against, and understandably. It’s amazing to think what that man accomplished in the times that he accomplished it, and how he accomplished it. He wasn’t running someone else’s offense. He reinvented how we play college basketball.

“A guy that they wouldn’t give a job to that was one of the best athletes to ever come out of West Texas, but they wouldn’t give him a real job, said, ‘Okay, fine, I’m gonna go take this job and I’m gonna change how we play basketball.’ If you watch college basketball today, it’s wide open. Now, defensively, it’s changed, and that’s because of him. The ‘Corey Beck hand-check rule’ that they don’t call the ‘Corey Beck hand-check rule,’ you’ve got all these extra timeouts, the game changed because of how he played it. People couldn’t keep up, and when they couldn’t keep up, they changed it.

“To think that every step he took, every time he got another rung up on the ladder, they’d try and knock him down, and he just hung on tight and kept fighting, and kept fighting, and kept fighting for what he believed in. The perseverance of that man while also raising a family and doing what he did will be his greatest legacy.

“The other thing outside of perseverance would just be how comfortable Coach was being Coach. And you would think somebody who had been through what he had been through would respond and try and blend in more, and instead Coach kinda said, ‘Not only am I not going to conform, I’m going to double down on who I am.’ And I know it was the 70s, but an African-American coach was a very, very, very, very, very rare thing to see as a head coach on any sideline in any major college sport. Much less one in a leisure suit and cowboy boots and a butterfly collar polka dot shirt with a gold chain on, coaching his ass off and his team runnin’ and gunnin’, doing what they did. And that was him. To this day he is authentically himself, there is nothing anyone has ever or will ever do to change it, Miss Rose included. She tried her best, I think she mellowed him some. His perseverance and authenticity are the two things I think I’ll take with me the most about him.”

“Every game was such a spectacle and such a huge deal here, so there was no room for not playing hard, no room for losses, no room for losing because you’re not playing hard. I think that was one of the things that helped me later in career and even when I was doing other stuff after basketball, just put in the work and try to get as prepared as possible, then the actual games become a little bit easier. You don’t have to deal with you not being prepared, you can just deal with whatever is happening. You have to practice hard, the games are supposed to be fun.”

“Discipline. Making the right decisions. I’m gonna tell you something, one of the life lessons he gave me — he was more like a father figure, we weren’t just there to play basketball. I remember one time I skipped class. This was one of the more memorable moments that I knew Coach Richardson wasn’t nothing to play with is when I missed class and the teacher called him.

“He told me to meet him at the football stadium. He got a chair, an umbrella, and was drinking on some kool-aid. Man, I had to run every stadium stair, up and down, once, until I got all the way around that stadium, and then I still had to go weight lift and practice! Man, I never played with Coach Richardson again.”

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“I’d just tell him that without him I’m not in the position I am today, I’m not the man I am today. I just appreciate him taking an opportunity on a young guy from Birmingham, Alabama. Not only that, but then offering him a position to be a volunteer coach, and just through the ranks, man. He just helped me become a man. That’s the key. He just poured into me. For a guy in that position, because everywhere Coach has been he’s been the first black coach — he’s been the first everywhere he’s been.

"For me, to sit there and have an opportunity to soak in all the things that are taking place — good, bad, ugly, whatever — obviously when you go through experiences, it shapes who you are. So, when I look at him, I look at him as a pioneer. He’s a guy that opened up a lot of doors for a lot of head coaches who have jobs today. We stand on his shoulders. You think about Jon Thompson, George Raveling, Coach (John) Chaney, I mean those are the guys who kind of opened up doors where we have the opportunities that we have today.”

“Probably how much more I appreciate him now as a grown-up than I did as a teenager. A lot of times we listen to the lessons, but I don’t know if we actually take heed to them all the time. I would tell him that as a man I am way more appreciative of the life lessons that he shared and the opportunity that he gave me, more so now than when I was at that age. I appreciate him and I thank him for it all.”

“I already have. Just a little bit of background. Coach (Andy) Stoglin passed away. I got pictures from the funeral and I got with Wayne Stehlik... every time you go to a funeral, everybody says, ‘Damn, we should’ve got together more!’ You know? ‘Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got together? The only time we see each other is at a funeral!’ I mean, those are things that are said. But sooner or later, the only time you see friends are at funerals. So, I saw pictures and I said to Wayne — as a staff, we need to go see Coach. Let’s go see Coach. Nothing big, just called Coach and said, ‘Hey Coach, we want to come see you.

“At that time, we said, ‘You know, we need to get the 1990 Final Four team together.’ That team has never been honored. Never. Now, we’re finally going to be honored this year at the Missouri game, but anyways. The next step was, ‘Hey, let’s get all the ‘90 team and go see Coach.’ So we did that. Sat out on his patio one night, actually it was the day before Rose passed away. We almost canceled it. But Coach said, ‘No, come on, let’s do this.’

“What was cool, we all sat down and Coach said, ‘Okay, we’re going to go around and say your impression of our era.’ Everybody went around and kept adding to it, and it got to me, and I said, ‘Coach, I have told you this before, but I’m going to say it in front of everybody: except for my father, I don’t respect anybody as much as I respect you.’ [chokes up]

“He took me when I was 24 and took a chance on me. He got his first opportunity — a breakthrough — a breakthrough for an African-American to go to Tulsa. And people don’t realize, 40 years before — 40 years is not a long time — 40 years before Coach got there, Tulsa had one of the worst race riots in the history of our country! And 40 years later they’re hiring an African American. And he’s chosen me, with no experience, to go to war with him.

“Then when he gets his huge break coming to Arkansas, being the first African American to lead a major program in the south, he chooses me again. This is just me, and everybody has their opinion, but I think the three most influential people in the history of Southeastern Conference basketball: Adolph Rupp, Pat Summit, Nolan Richardson. I strongly feel that way.”

“I would just tell him thank you and that I love him. I’ve told him that before, but thank you. I think ‘thank you’ covers everything he’s done for me. And I love him. When you tell someone thank you and you love them, that’s all that needs to be said.

“God puts people in your life to help you develop as a man. I’m not the perfect man and never will be. I’m a God-fearing man and a Christian man trying to do the best I can in my everyday walk. My dad did his part, and thank God he put a man like Coach Richardson in my life to help me through my ups and downs, my imperfections and try-to-be perfections. So, just thank you, and I love you.”

“Thank you for letting me be on this journey with you. I had been with him at Arkansas, I had been with him when we coached the Mexican National Team in 2007 in an attempt to take the Mexican team to the Olympics, I coached with him for a year and a half with the Tulsa Shock at the WNBA, so I’ve got some different experiences than anybody else.

“For whatever reason, a trust was developed, and when Mike (Anderson) and Scott (Edgar) and others went on to their other careers, my family and I were still here and I would coach with him throughout those different experiences. So, it’s thanking him for bringing me on the journey, but also thanking him for teaching me more about people. Things will be said about race one way or another, that’s just human nature.

"But I heard Coach say a gazillion times, ‘The only race that I’m worried about is the human race.’ When you look at some of his best friends that he had, it was a combination of different people, and it didn’t really matter what their race was. They were friends and they were loyal to Coach and he was loyal to them. The aspect of the human race being so important has really made an impact on me.”

“How special the run he had was here. And he was the first to do it. I’d love for us to win five national championships in a row, that’d be great, but Coach Richardson will always be the one that won the first one. What he did here, he took a good program from Coach (Eddie) Sutton, and he took it to as good a program in that stretch as in anywhere in the country. Coach, you had a run from the 88-89 season to the 95-96 season that was as good as any run in college basketball.

“And now there have been teams that have won two national championships, and won three, I understand that. And those are greater times when you win three compared to one, that’s greater, for sure, but I think what he did here, he showed Arkansas people, ‘Why not Arkansas? You can win a national championship here.’ And then he did it.”

“I tell him every time I talk to him I love him, and thank you. I mean, he gave me the opportunity of a lifetime and we didn’t maybe have the teams that came before us, and that’s something I’ll be on my deathbed years from now and regret that we weren’t able to be one of those teams for him. But to give me an opportunity to be an Arkansas Razorback, knowing if I knew that my time at Arkansas was gonna go exactly the way it did, I would do it all over again. I wouldn’t go anywhere else, I wouldn’t play for anybody else or with anybody else. Just, I love you and thank you for the opportunity you gave me. Thank you for letting me be myself while you coached me. I could be difficult at times, but he always let me be myself, and that’s something I’ll always appreciate.”

“For me, I just appreciated his investment in me and the opportunity to be a part of something like that. I contributed very little except maybe help the GPA out a little bit, but he doesn’t necessarily treat me different as a person today. Obviously things were different then because if you don’t play every day it’s different, which I get. But today he treats me the same as he would anyone else. He valued me a lot more than what my contributions were, but just as a person, and I think that’s important for anybody."

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Early in the interview process, Blake Eddins told me I had to ask about Rose Richardson.

“Ask, when you’re talking to players, especially with her passing, I would ask about Rose, too. I don’t think she gets enough credit for the man that he became. Especially in the time that he was coming through, you had to have somebody that had your back, and I don’t think anybody’s had anybody’s back quite like Miss Rose had Coach Richardson’s, whether it was to give him a hug after a game, or there’s a famous story about her may or may not hitting somebody with a purse at a Tulsa game a million years ago because they yelled something at Coach they shouldn’t have and it was well-deserved.

"But her influence on him and her influence on us as players when we’d go out to his farm and the first thing she would do is give you a hug and ask how you were, and was always kind, and was there for you. She’s an important part to his story, she really is.”

“No question about it, she was very instrumental. They were a team. She was the wind upon his wings that let him fly. She was the closer, when you talk about recruiting. She closes the deal. Coach could get them there, but she was the one that closed all the deals with all the great, great players and the great kids who have come through that program. She was a mother to all of us. She was our second mother.

"Obviously her name says it all: Rose. She was Mother Rose to all of us and she treated each of us like we were her own kids. And that made it easier for Coach. When you talk about meals at their house, there was nothing like it, but more importantly she just made you feel like one of her kids.”

“When they went to the junior college, the cafeteria closed on the weekends. So they’re out in the middle of West Texas, with no local players. None. It’s not like you run home to momma Friday night, eat, and be back at practice, no. They gave them (the players) a small stipend. Coach collected that, and for three years, every weekend, Rose cooked her rear end off, and Coach fed the team on the weekends!

"The warmth and the depth of Coach was there even before he got to the University of Tulsa. You talk about kids not wanting to play for you — (shoot), you don’t feed them, see how hard they’ll play for you. That’s like on the workforce — you don’t pay people for a couple weeks, you’ll see if they keep coming back to work. He and she provided a means for them to have a chance to be successful.

“And that’s like when I went to the last place I coached, at Eastern Oklahoma, which is out in the middle of nowhere in Southeast Oklahoma. I got there and the cafeteria closed at five o’clock Friday. So I found a way, just followed in his footsteps. You’ve gotta feed kids! I found a way and pretty soon after about too much they (my players) said, ‘Damn, Coach, we need to keep this cafeteria open.’ And I said, ‘It would help a lot! It would help my pocket a lot!’

“But that’s just one fraction of it. Rose was always there. He could coach a kid hard, hard, hard for two hours a day, and then they could go to her and pour it all out. Anybody who’s been a part of his program should consider themselves extremely fortunate.”

“I hate to sound cliche, but she was his rock, no doubt about it. People just don’t know… and I hate to… but what black men go through in a world that can be so cruel and yet so loving at the same time, there’s no way Coach Richardson made it through the things that he made it through without Mrs. Richardson. No way. No way. She was a mother to us, so I know what she had to be for him. She was the glue.

“I’m telling you right now, you could just see it. On the plane rides home, like you know we’d go play in Florida, and she’s just right there. After a great win, after a bad loss, she’s right there. There were moments you got off that plane and Coach was hurting. And we had to walk by Coach, and you could see her just holding his hand, and she would look at us and give us that look… and then at practice the next day or wherever we played the next time, they were in some serious trouble. Serious trouble. Because for him not to say nothing? Oh they were in trouble. And that was all Mama Rose. She was gonna take care of him so that he wouldn’t go ballistic on us. So we knew we had to take care of him.

“I can’t even imagine some of the things that Coach had to go through. There are stories that y’all kinda just know the outskirts of, but we were in it. The things he had to go through… nah. Nobody should’ve gone through that. And the only person that helped him keep moving forward had to be Mama Rose.

“There are two things that you’re talking about (early in Richardson’s time at Arkansas) and neither of them are his daughter. Where’s the human being? Where’s the Christian? Where’s the loving person? The worst thing in the world was going on in Coach’s life and the two things people wanted to talk about were that I’m a black coach who can’t coach and the team ain’t doing good.”

“From my point of view as a player, Coach was this bigger than life persona that — watching him in the weight room benching 225 pounds like 50 times, which I know isn’t what happened — but I mean just how strong and big he was. The only person that I ever saw, that, you know, she just had to look at him, and whatever it was that she didn’t like or whatever was going on, I mean she had a way that spoke to him really without words.

"And that’s just what I’ve noticed about it, just his love and respect for her. As we’ve gotten older I’ve invited Coach to football games or baseball games, and these last two years he’s been having to take care of her — I know she passed here not long ago, and I know that was a tough time for Coach. Just, you know, he spent so much of the last few years just being there and taking care of her."

“To me, she was taking care of me when I was living with them, so obviously like a second mother to me. The bond was obviously not as strong, but also the first two years, the first year were rough times for them, also. They had just lost a daughter, and she was saying that me being there was like she didn’t want me to be there but she needed me to be there at that point. It was like a big realization that it had to do with more important stuff than basketball. For that, for me, she was a really special lady and I was really heartbroken when she passed away a few months ago.

“As far as being involved with the team, she was super involved. She was always asking questions, always wanting to do the other side, not the basketball side. The human relations side. For Coach, also I think she was just a very supportive person throughout the things he had to go through throughout his life.”

“She was there from start to finish. She was just a beautiful spirited person, man. It was just unbelievable how nice this woman was. To have a wife for that long, for a lifetime, there’s nothing like it. She was his peace. He married the perfect woman."

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During my interview with John Engskov, he asked, unprompted, if anyone had relayed that story to me.

“Did any of those guys — and I was not there, it's just been passed down — where they played Texas Tech and he got so angry he kicked the board and his boots flew out from under him?”

I asked Arlyn Bowers specifically about the chalkboard incident, because Darrell Hawkins mentioned Bowers being there.

“I sure remember, that, too. You had to be a fool to laugh at that! But on the inside you’re about to explode, man. We couldn’t wait to get up out of there. But I’ll tell you, if you’ve ever been to one of Coach Richardson’s practices when he was mad and told you he was gonna run your tongue out, man when he told us that, ooo—wee. It was trouble for that team when we went back out there.”

Before I concluded my interview with Blake Eddins, he remembered one funny story he wanted to tell me before we hung up. I’m including it here because I found it hilarious and it perfectly encapsulates the relationship between Richardson and Eddins.

“I joked around probably way too much with Coach. He’d take me out of a scrimmage or a game and I’d have a little comment or we’d go back and forth. From the second I got there he and I kind of clicked, where for some reason I got away with kind of joking around with him in ways that other people didn’t.

“One of my first — and it may have even been an exhibition game — as a freshman. You know, Coach had these suits, boots and suits, but the suits were always these wild colors and they were cut a little different and he’d wear some kind of different kind of shirt up under, and I would joke with him about them. I’m 18, 19 years old joking with the man deciding my playing time about his outfits, and after we had had a few weeks kind of going back and forth about his outfits, after a game he brings this man into the locker room.

“It’s this old man who is bald, he’s got a patch on one eye, and he’s got a cane. He calls me over and says, ‘Blake, I want you to meet a dear friend of mine. This is Ed Beshara. Mr. Beshara is from Tulsa and when I first got the job at Tulsa and was trying to figure myself out, couldn’t really afford nice suits to do things, he took me under his wing and he’s been making my suits ever since.’

“I just started laughing, and said, ‘Oh, I get it, because he’s blind in one eye! Oh, real funny, Coach. Like, the blind guy makes your suits, I get it. Real funny.’ And nobody laughed. Nobody budged. And I kept saying it, ‘because he’s blind!’

“Finally he just shook his head and said, ‘Blake. This is who’s been making my suits,’ and he was serious. I went, ‘Oh my God!’ I was so embarrassed. Come to find out, Ed Beshara was like a legendary citizen in Tulsa, and was a great man who took care of a lot of people. He made suits for everybody in town, and was just a legend in Tulsa, and a wonderful man who came back to a handful of games and who I got to know a little bit. He couldn’t have been nicer. His grandson, Brian Beshara, ended up being a really good player at LSU while we were there. And we played against Brian Beshara and he was on those good LSU teams.

“Yeah so he calls me over and I give him this whole thing about, ‘Oh yeah, the blind man, that’s who makes your suits? I get it,’ and just nothing. Silence. But Mr. Beshara was one of the best people he ever introduced me to, and it was an unfortunate foot-in-mouth situation for me, but Coach took it in stride and we had a lot of fun with that going forward.”

There were two things Darrell Hawkins wanted me to make sure I added in this article. I am sharing each of his quotes in their own section:

The Trifecta:

“Please make sure you put this in there. I don’t care if you take out everything else, but put this in there: he’s the only man to have won an NIT championship, a national Junior College championship and an NCAA championship. He’s the only man. It has not been done. If you’re the only one that’s done something, then you drop the mic.

“Any level, any type of player, he could coach. That’s what gets me is they talk about, ‘Oh we’re just so athletic, athletic, athletic.’ Trust me, when he was in El Paso coaching down there, he didn’t have (6-foot-7-inch players) that could run 4.5s. He didn’t have 6’3”s who have 35-40 inch verticals. And he won. I like to remind people of that.”

Ron Huery:

“Ron Huery was my roommate. Ron had his things that he dealt with and everything, but let me tell you something about Ron Huery: he was the light in the darkest times for Coach Richardson and Mama Richardson. Because Yvonne loved Ron. Loved him to death. Mama Richardson loved Ron like a son because she saw what Ron did for Yvonne. There was no way on God’s green earth that Coach and Mama Richardson would ever turn their backs on Ron Huery. He brought the light in the darkest of times. That right there, he did that. You have to put that in there, too."

That sentiment was echoed by Scott Edgar, as well.

“Ron (Huery) was the hope when there wasn’t a whole lot of hope. We weren’t very good that year, but everyone in the state said, ‘Yeah, but we have Ron Huery coming.’ That was the magnitude of signing him early. And he lived up to it.”

Anderson told a story of a close-call after being on a recruiting visit to see Derek Hood play.

“Well, one of them, I don’t know if it’s ever been told, but I’ll never forget we were on a recruiting trip to go see Derek Hood play," Anderson said. "Derek played in Kansas City and we normally would take the school plane, but for some reason the school plane was being used, so we rented a plane. Coach was very, very serious about when he flew, he wanted two pilots. Always. Well, we only had one pilot on this particular flight. So we’re going from Fayetteville to Kansas City, we watch Derek Hood play a phenomenal game, then we’re on our way back, and the pilot calls me up. He just says, ‘Hey, Coach can you come up here for a second?’

“He tells me that one of the engines on the plane was not working — and we were over Neosho (Missouri) — and that we were going to be coasting in. He said, ‘Could you relay that message to Coach Richardson?’

“Obviously, I gotta go do that. I tell him, ‘Coach, we gotta buckle up because I think we’re gonna be gliding from Neosho all the way into Fayetteville!’ Sure enough, when I told him that and we looked at each other, I think we both looked real pale. We kinda looked at each other like, ‘We better buckle up!’

“And as we’re coasting in — and the pilot did an unbelievable job — there were ambulances, cop cars, fire trucks just kind of on the runway, I think just in case something didn’t go right. Lo and behold, he landed the plane, we looked out and, man, I’ll tell you what, there was a hole in one of the engines. He looked at me, I looked at him, and I tell you what, we weren’t black, we were pale.

“We thanked the Lord and we kissed the ground when we got on the ground, but Coach and I, we spent a lot of time together. That’s one of the experiences, you know, but even when we won a national championship I think we were so locked in, people were celebrating everywhere. Of course you’ve got the president, you’ve got everybody, but I think Coach was in the mode of, ‘Okay, alright, well now we got to get ready to do it again.’ He didn’t really, I don’t think, really get a chance to enjoy it."

“Here’s one thing Mr. Iba said, because when I was a young coach at Tulsa, Mr. Henry Iba was still living," Scott Edgar said. "We’d go over and talk with him, maybe once or twice a year. He said, ‘When you play slow and get beat by a bucket or two, you can have every alibi in the world. But when you play fast the way Coach does, you can expose yourself to getting beat pretty good some nights.’ So he wasn’t afraid to gamble. He wasn’t afraid to change things, he wasn’t afraid to do something that was unconventional. He was able to teach the unconventional, and the people in his program would gain confidence with it, and the unconventional became unconquerable.

“Between 1990 and 1995, it was the program of the 90s. Arkansas won more games than any Division I school in the country. In six years, there’s four (Final) Fours plus an (Elite) Eight. There’s only a handful of teams in the history of basketball that you can say over a six year period, four of them they went to the (Elite) Eight or better. You know, (Eric Musselman) came alive in March two or three times, but he didn’t have four (Elite) Eights."

One of the many lessons I learned throughout this project was that the "40 Minutes of Hell" moniker was somewhat of a misinterpretation.

“Everybody interpreted the 40 Minutes of Hell as the game," Darrell Hawkins said. "The 40 Minutes of Hell is practice. The first 40 minutes of our practice was pure hell. Pure hell. It was non-stop. We didn’t stop, there weren’t any water breaks, none of that. It was constant, constant movement. We were conditioned to be in better shape than anybody. It didn’t matter how the game was going, we knew eventually… we knew we’d give up some points on the press. If you were in the same level of talent as us, we would wear you out the last 10-15 minutes of the game. If you weren’t in the same level of talent with us, we were gonna wear you down before halftime. It was over."

That sentiment was echoed by other members of the program at the time, including assistant coach Wayne Stehlik.

“Yup, yup," Stehlik said. "That was some three-man-weave stuff, some things with the medicine balls, with a weighted ball and a basketball, but there were 40 minutes where we were doing things to get mentally tough, to get physically tough, to make us better basketball players, and then we got into the regular practice of shooting and other kind of drills. But yes, '40 Minutes of Hell' was just part of a practice."

A lot has been made over the years of the strained relationship between longtime Arkansas Athletics Director Frank Broyles and Richardson, and former assistant coach Scott Edgar was able to provide a small window into that relationship from early into Richardson's tenure.

“One of my favorite Coach stories: we were still over in Barnhill — it was either Year 1 or Year 2 — and the program wasn’t turned yet," Edgar said. "All of our office doors were open and he comes out of his office, the office door slams, and he said, ‘We may not have jobs when I get back.’

“He went over there and told Broyles, he said, ‘Coach, you called me, I didn’t interview for this job. If you stop you-know-what-ing with me, I’ll deliver you a national championship.’ And he did!”

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