The day after Eric Musselman was hired, I made a phone call to one of the all-time Arkansas greats for a scouting report on the new basketball coach.
“Yes, I know Coach Musselman very well,” Corey Beck said. “He was a coach in the CBA when I was playing. We had games against him with a championship hanging on them over and over. We are so lucky to have hired him. He’s a great coach.”
Well, that wasn’t really the top end of the scouting report. It came a bit later when Beck revealed that he’d already communicated with Musselman. They were texting well after midnight when Musselman first arrived in Fayetteville.
It was a great clue on Musselman’s work ethic. It seems he’s at work night or day. If you are in his inner circle, expect a text almost at any time. There have been plenty of revelations about the third-year Arkansas coach staying up all night after a game to look at tape.
“There is no off switch with Eric,” said Jimmy Dykes, an ESPN college basketball analyst.
“Arkansas is very fortunate to have him (as basketball coach). He’s just great. He’s always at work.”
Dykes lives in Springdale, but travels the nation for ESPN. He’s busy in preparation for the upcoming season.
Part of his early-season schedule includes the ESPN broadcasts for the Battle 4 Atlantis at Paradise Island, Bahamas. The field includes Arizona State, Auburn, Loyola Chicago, Michigan State, Syracuse, Connecticut, Virginia Commonwealth and Baylor.
“I’ve talked to the coaches at UConn, Syracuse, Arizona State and Baylor already,” Dykes said. “I’m calling to ask about their teams, but they know I live (in Northwest Arkansas) and they bring up Eric. They say, ‘Eric has it rolling.’”
They are talking about the way Arkansas rolled to the Elite Eight last year. The 25-7 Hogs turned heads with their second-place finish in the SEC and the way they battled to victories in the NCAA Tournament over Colgate, Texas Tech and Oral Roberts before an 81-72 loss to eventual national champion Baylor.
“When I talk to coaches, they say, ‘Arkansas is back big time,’ and it’s not one thing. It’s the way his team plays, the way he’s recruiting. They may be one player away from signing the No. 1 class in the country. There is not one naysayer out there.”
The Hogs lost five of the eight players who played against Baylor, but Musselman has reloaded with another strong batch from the transfer portal. It’s something he did well during three trips to the NCAA Tournament in four seasons at Nevada.
Dykes lauds the work Musselman and his staff do to take advantage of the transfer portal. The background work on each player is extensive.
“No coach has a magic wand to be able to just bring in seven or nine guys each year and be good,” Dykes said. “It’s not easy to bring in that many new players and then have them mesh.
“So he has a gift to be as good as he’s been at Nevada and Arkansas to get great results with a new roster each year. It takes a lot of work.”
Dykes said Musselman and his staff are among the best at identifying what they want when assembling a team.
“I think part of it comes from his background in the developmental league,” Dykes said. “Those rosters changed month by month. So he’s done it. Obviously, from his results at Nevada and Arkansas, he’s going to keep doing it again and again.
“To do that, you need to make a deep background check on the kids he’s bringing in. I’ve heard the work he’s done from other staffs.”
It’s not about finding out if they can score or rebound. The numbers aren’t important.
“There is a phrase I love a lot: it’s the things you can’t count are what count the most,” Dykes said. “It’s are they coachable, do they work, do they have life priorities.
“The number of times they shoot it, score or rebound is not what’s most important and the Arkansas staff does a great job of figuring those things out.”
It doesn’t always look pretty from the start.
“No, it takes a while to blend all of these talents together,” Dykes said. “And, you can’t just take it for granted that it’s going to work.
“But, if I’m a betting man, I’m betting on Eric to make it work again this season. I’ve seen them struggle early and then quickly get it sorted out.”
Dykes pointed to Arkansas’ 1-3 start in SEC play last season, which led to one-on-one meetings for each player to discuss the right shot for himself.
“For the first time in their career, they learned what is the right shot for the right moment,” Dykes said.
“I watched the Red-White Game and was impressed with the shot selection. I didn’t see any bad shots. That has to be pretty pleasing for the middle of October.”
There are other things that were not so polished. Defense was lacking, but that will come.
“You just take a few weeks for one thing, then a few weeks for something else,” Dykes said. “It’s a process. You chip away. Then, you may have to circle back to fix something that you thought was settled. You can’t address everything at the start.”
But Dykes thinks it will all come together.
“There is always what you call slippage,” Dykes said, “but it will get addressed and fixed. Eric is a great communicator and he has a great staff.”
They are organized in all ways, including the new ways to build a program with social media.
“No one in the country is doing social media as well as Eric and his staff,” Dykes said. “It’s part of what he’s doing to recruit at such a high level.”
It’s another way Musselman has returned Arkansas basketball to the big time.