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FAYETTEVILLE — Eric Musselman wasted no time filling his latest staff vacancy.
About an hour after Clay Moser revealed he was stepping away from the team, Arkansas announced it had promoted Anthony Ruta to assistant coach.
Ruta has been with the Razorbacks since Musselman was hired three years ago, but as the team’s director of basketball operations.
This is a similar path as the one Ruta followed at Nevada, where he was Musselman’s director of basketball operations for two years before being promoted to assistant coach his last two years with the Wolf Pack.
“We are excited and fortunate to have Anthony make this progression on our staff,” Musselman said in a statement. “His tireless work ethic and overall basketball knowledge led us to hire him both as director of operations and assistant coach at Nevada and then again here at Arkansas.
“Anthony has proven himself time and again in every facet from scheduling, recruiting, player development and on-court instruction. He has been an integral part of our teams’ successes as well as developing our philosophy and terminology. He has built strong relationships with our players and has done a phenomenal job representing the University of Arkansas and Razorback basketball these past three years.”
Ruta and Musselman first crossed paths at Arizona State. Musselman was an assistant coach for the Sun Devils from 2012-14, during which time Ruta worked with the team as a graduate assistant.
Since rejoining each other at Nevada in 2015, Ruta has been Musselman’s right-hand man in multiple aspects — most notably scheduling.
While this past season may have been a weaker non-conference slate, the previous year’s slate featured three mid-major programs that pulled off at least one upset in the NCAA Tournament: Oral Roberts, North Texas and Abilene Christian. Musselman gave all the credit to Ruta for that.
With this promotion, Arkansas’ assistant coaching staff is full. Ruta joins Keith Smart and Gus Argenal, who were hired last offseason and just completed their first season at Arkansas.
