FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Eric Musselman emerged from Tuesday afternoon’s Arkansas practice and was near-instantly greeted by a quartet of coeds who were all too eager to say hello.
“Coach Muss, can we get a selfie?” one of them asked.
The most popular man on campus of course obliged. As he crossed Nolan Richardson Drive, which separates Bud Walton Arena from the Razorbacks’ Basketball Performance Center, Musselman approached the student encampment that was nearing 200 tents, with dozens more to be set up in the hours to come.
Another student shouts, “What’s up, Muss?”
In a span of two minutes, he gladly takes almost a dozen more pictures. Excitable students in winter hats manifest from their tents, one of them clutching an air mattress, others clinging onto pillows and donning blankets. Some scramble for a quick photo. One student walks by me, making a desperate phone call to her friend: “Girl, you better get through here quick. Muss is takin’ pictures.”
As he turns to walk into the basketball building, a voice from 20 feet away yells, “Muss! Catch!”
A football is incoming.
They are most definitely ready in Fayetteville.
This week has ushered in the inaugural ACC/SEC Challenge, which has replaced the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. Tonight, we get to see two teams that helped define college basketball’s second-greatest decade, the 1990s: No. 7 Duke at Arkansas from Bud Walton Arena.
I landed on Tuesday and took in Arkansas’ practice inside the Basketball Palace of Mid-America. They’ve already draped white “BEAT DUKE” rally towels on the seats. In this the 30th-season anniversary of Arkansas’ only national championship — beating Duke in the title game back in 1994 — I was told legendary Razorbacks coach Nolan Richardson will be in the house Wednesday night, his first regular-season appearance at an Arkansas game since 2019. The place is going to be electric.
You know, it wouldn’t shock me…
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