Eric Musselman took over as Arkansas’ head coach in 2019. In just three years, he has vastly elevated Arkansas’ status with a trip to the Elite Eight and another top-15 ranking this year.
The Razorbacks finished fourth in the SEC, had two first-team All-SEC selections by the coaches for the first time since Corliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman in 1995 and are on-pace to be a top-5 seed in the NCAA Tournament for back-to-back years for the first time since 1994-1995. Musselman also recruited and developed the first one-and-done player in program history, Moses Moody.
All of those factor into how Arkansas as a program is perceived nationally. To get an idea of just how the Razorbacks are viewed on a national scale, HawgBeat reached out to five national basketball reporters for their thoughts on the state of the program, their place in the national pecking order and what that means for college basketball as a whole.
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Has Arkansas "arrived" back on the national scene?
Kevin Sweeney, Sports Illustrated
Yeah, I mean I think they have. There’s certainly more relevance to the brand than there was under previous administrations. Obviously from a winning standpoint it’s there, right? You’re beating Kentucky, you’re beating Auburn, you’re winning on national television, you’re going to second weekends in the NCAA Tournament, but I also think the way that Muss runs his program, and the marketing side of things and the brand and the way he recruits, all of that stuff brings Arkansas onto the national stage as much as the winning.
There are places that win that are less relevant than Arkansas because of how Muss brands the program. I think the winning has to be there, and obviously he’s done a tremendous job with that, but I think when you look up and you see the success they’ve had combined with the fact that we’re talking about Arkansas every day in the first week of March, I think that’s enough to say that this program has certainly arrived.
Jeff Goodman, Stadium
Yeah. I think they arrived last year and I think we thought it might be a one-year off-year this year, and obviously that hasn’t been the case. It was kind of a tale of two seasons, but yeah, listen. I said it when he got hired, and you know I said at the end of Mike Anderson’s tenure, I felt like it had run its course. Muss, I thought, was a terrific hire for Arkansas, and it’s proven to be the case. He has done even more that I thought he would do in his first couple years and he hasn’t even gotten in the top-tier high school talent that’s coming in next year, and I think that could even take it to a different level, depending on the transfers he brings in with those guys.
Zach Braziller, New York Post
Yeah, I think you can say that. When you talk about the national scene, it’s all about March. People love college basketball and are into it all year-round, but really it’s about March. You can have a great year and it doesn’t mean anything if you lose in the first round. All anyone remembers about Ohio State last year is that they lost in the first round — they don’t remember that they had a really good year. It’s all about March.
If they get to another Sweet Sixteen, to me, you can definitely make the argument that they have arrived on the national scene. Look, they’ve clearly been over the last two seasons one of the best teams in the country. I’m very surprised at how good they are this year, especially when you consider they lost four of their top six scorers, but yeah I do think they’ve arrived on the national scene. But if they lose in the first round this year, I think that takes a lot away from it. It’s unfair because in other sports you aren’t quite as judged on the postseason as you are in college basketball because you get so many people who just jump in from the end of February through March and a team loses a first-round game and they go, ‘Oh, what a failure that year was.’ It’s just the way it is.
Aaron Torres, Fox Sports
First of all, I think it’s a great question, because I think there’s always an assumption that when a team has a good season, a good run, a deep tournament run, a good hire, whatever, and the assumption is, ‘Oh, they’re back!’. It’s not always that simple. There are videos and audio clips of me the day Muss was hired and I said that this was the best move that Arkansas could’ve possibly made. That was largely confirmed last year, but when you’re sitting at 0-3 in SEC play to start… I don’t think anybody ever questioned whether Muss would work or not, but when you bring in largely a new roster every year, there’s always gonna be some years where you have a ton of success and there’s some years where you’re just gonna be less successful.
Calipari has had the No. 1 overall team in the country, he’s had four, five, six, seven, eight seeds in the NCAA Tournament. He’s missed the tournament twice. So, when Arkansas was 0-3, it wasn’t as though I had doubted the coaching staff or anything like that, but you start to wonder, ‘Maybe this just isn’t the right group at the right time,’ or something like that.
I bring it up to say that what they’ve done over the past 15 games at this point is incredible and it just confirms everything that I said the day that Coach Muss was hired. He’s forward thinking – would be the best word to describe in terms of he was so far ahead on the portal, now he has a proof of concept to show to recruits, and I think this thing is going to keep rolling. To answer your question, to “arrive” is not a one-off, one-season, one-NCAA Tournament run type of thing, so to see it for a second year in a row, to see a lengthy, lengthy, lengthy SEC win streak a second year in a row, is just absolutely incredible. Yes, I believe now we have a pretty good idea that this wasn’t a one-off last year and that this should now be the expectation of top-two, top-three, top-four finishes in the SEC and a team that’s equipped to make a run every season. By my definition, that’s back.
Adam Zagoria, New York Times Sports/Forbes Sports/ZAGSblog
With three straight 20-plus win seasons under coach Eric Musselman, Arkansas has definitely become a major factor on the national scene. They’re a top-4 team this year in the super-competitive SEC after finishing second a year ago. They play an exciting up-tempo brand of basketball, and Coach Musselman is likely the SEC Coach of the Year. JD Notae is a big-time player who performs his best in clutch moments.
