Eric Musselman hired at Arkansas

Photo Credit: David Gottschalk-Whole Hog Sports

The Southeastern Conference performed well in the 2018-19 basketball season as the SEC placed seven teams in the "Big Dance", four of those survived until the Sweet 16 and were a controversial foul away from Auburn playing on Monday night for the national championship.

However, even in the best of years, someone has to be the weak sister that gets sand kicked in their faces and as teams have to finish at the top of league play there are teams that have to finish at the bottom as well.

Four of those teams decided to make head coaching changes and each decided to hire successful coaches, but from different backgrounds as their hire.
Alabama replaced NBA veteran Avery Johnson with Buffalo's Nate Oats, who had been very successful in making his Buffalo Bulls the bully of the Mid-American Conference in winning three of the four MAC tournaments under his watch and averaging 84 points a game last season.
Texas A&M decided to go with the more proven veteran as the Aggies swapped Billy Kennedy with Buzz Williams, who had won over 20 games in each of the last four seasons at Virginia Tech.
Vanderbilt released Bryce Drew and hired Jerry Stackhouse, a former NBA star that had served as an NBA assistant, but has never been a head coach at any level or coached at any college ever.
That left Arkansas and they hired a coach that blends all of the best qualities of the above three coaches and might give them the best of them all.

Eric Musselman has the NBA experience of Stackhouse (including a head coaching stint with the Warriors), the program building of Williams and the upbeat style of play of Oats and his hiring at the University of Arkansas seems to me to be a situation where the second choice is actually the better choice.
Arkansas had shown interest in Houston coach Kelvin Sampson, but with the continuing investment in Cougar sports by booster Lorenzo Fertitta, the Cougars don't pay their coaches like a mid-major school (as shown when they went after and grabbed Dana Holgorsen from West Virginia to head the football program) and signed Sampson to a six-year, eighteen million dollar extension to take what appeared to be the Hogs top choice off the meat market (pig pun intended).

Musselman's teams at Nevada averaged 80 points a game last season, won the Mountain West three times (regular season) in four years, appeared in the NCAA three times and finished with a four-year record of 110-34.
To put that into perspective, Nevada had losing records for each of the three seasons before Musselman's hiring and won only nine games in the season preceding his hiring.
In four seasons, Nevada increased their PPG by twenty and came within one basket on an elite eight appearance, so the turnaround was remarkable under Musselman's guidance.

Arkansas is a school that has basketball tradition, winning a national title under Nolan Richardson in 1994 and going to a Final Four under Eddie Sutton, but only occasionally have popped up with strong season since Richardson's departure in the 2001-02 campaign.
Arkansas has strong facilities, is the main school in the state and for a state of its size has a better than average pool of in-state players to recruit from.
Add those facts to a rabid in-state fan base and you should at minimum have a program that consistently in the top of their conference along with the capabilities of national contention.
Why hasn't Arkansas been able to live up to those standards?
I'm not sure, the Razorbacks appear to have everything, if not more than most schools that have been finishing ahead of them and even though I haven't seen any games recently, I've never thought that their last head coach, Mike Anderson was awful to the point of being a severe hindrance to contention.

Eric Musselman will bring a fun brand of basketball to Fayetteville and will hit the recruiting trail with intensity.
Musselman could use the JUCO and transfer route as he did at Nevada to give the program an instant jolt of energy or he could attempt to leap into the Arkansas recruiting class to immediately establish his credibility with the high school coaches of the state, but Musselman recruited nationally at Nevada and he'll have a larger and more visible platform at Arkansas to recruit from.

The other three SEC newcomers may have bigger names from their playing days, bigger coaching names from a Power Five school or even the hot young coach from a mid-major, but I have a feeling Arkansas just may have added the best of all to their bench and the Hogs will be returning to prominence in the next two to three seasons, if not sooner.
The energy and enthusiasm will be contagious in the Fayetteville area and I'm just glad that I can kick back and root for Arkansas without the worries of Eric Musselman coaching a team in Big Ten or Big East play!