Emotions fairly jump off of Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson. He exposes them, fashions them, trots them out for public viewing, and often his feelings are known even before he explains them with words.
So here, as he prepares to talk about his ninth-ranked Razorbacks, his back straightens and he shifts forward in his seat, and it already is obvious how much they invigorate him. He is alive now, animated, and when he finally does speak, he orates with a near-evangelical fervor. “I think we got some nice athletes. But I think the real reason (for their surprising 8-0 start1) is this team is a team. There are no stars,” he says.
“It’s a team trying to get some identity. It’s a team striving for playing time. It’s by far one of the hardest-working teams I’ve coached. I think they really represent my personality. I’m very aggressive. These guys are very aggressive on the floor. They play with that reckless abandon, especially on the defensive end of the floor.”
He carries on like this for long paragraphs, his assessments arriving in staccato bursts, but then his mood alters abruptly when the subject switches to his Razorbacks of a year ago. That team featured three future first-round draft choices, four current pros in all, and it would go 26-8, win the Southeastern Conference title and reach the second round of the NCAA tournament. But questions hovered over it all through that season, and lingering there in the background was a dormitory incident involving some of his players and a Fayetteville, Ark., woman.
So here, as he prepares to talk of that team, Richardson’s posture withers, and he slumps back in his seat, and already it is obvious how much the memory pains him. He is still now, slack, and when he finally does speak, he remembers in a monotone. “Last year was hard, even coming into last year. I was disappointed by what happened,” he says.
“I never was really comfortable. When I look at my role as a coach and what had happened, it really deflated me. I took it personally. I feel they’re my kids. I was told several times, `Hey. You can’t be with them 24 hours.’ But I still took it that way, and I guess it bothered me all year long.”
– – –
He noticed the difference back in November, at the first of the 6 a.m. practices he routinely holds. He would wander out onto the court a half-hour early, and already, out there shooting and stretching, would be a number of his players. Last year, Richardson would then think, guys weren’t showing up until just before six.
Those guys, his Razorbacks of last year, were touted as national title contenders, and they were suffused with the distinctive talents of Todd Day, Lee Mayberry and Oliver Miller. Already, as sophomores, those three had reached the Final Four, and their encore as juniors was reaching a regional final before losing to Kansas. Now, as seniors, they appeared ready to soar once again.
But storm clouds followed them into their season, and lying in their wake was that messy and highly publicized dorm incident. The woman involved would never press charges, but the incident colored these Razorbacks and a year they had entered with such hope.
Day, implicated in the incident, would be suspended for a dozen games (for, among other things, breaking a campus rule prohibiting women in dorms). Miller, though not involved, would find his name connected to it (he sued a TV station, and won an out-of-court settlement). And Mayberry, whose innocence never was in doubt, would be left to carry a heavy load virtually alone.
“That dorm incident put a damper on everything,” is what Richardson will say of it at one point.
“It was a patching job all the way through last year,” he will add minutes later.
“Todd’s out half a season,” he eventually will conclude, “and now he’s got to come in and try to put a whole season into half because, you know, he knows he’s got a chance to go to the NBA. Miller’s got a chance to go to the NBA. I don’t think they came back with the attitude they had when they were young, green, hungry and playing hard. I think if that hadn’t happened, they would have come back thinking, `We want it now.’ But it wasn’t a big deal anymore.
“It was chaos. Even though it was over, it just kept going. When they came back, it was, `I’ll be glad when we can finish up and get out of here.’ In sports, you can’t have that attitude. But here we got a clean slate. We got new kids, and they’re hungry.”
That slate was wiped clean when his talented Razorbacks lost to Memphis State in the second round of the NCAA tournament, and then his new-and-unknown crew started painting its own portrait at those first, pre-dawn practices. It was unranked, and picked to finish no better than third in the SEC West. It was anonymous, and buoyed by only one returning starter (point guard Robert Shepherd out of Bowen High). But it was eager, so much more eager than the group that had preceded it, and that alone was enough to rejuvenate Richardson.
Last year his team had won with offense, and he had not pushed it to play the pressure defense he favors. Now, he knew, he could return to an harrassing style, that style he describes as “40 Minutes of Hell.” Last year his team was fat, and he had been unable to instill it with any sense of urgency. Now, he knew, he could cajole lean-and-sinous kids, kids looking to make a mark of their own.
“In the first three, four days of practice,” says he, “they showed me that they didn’t mind getting after it.”
“People,” says Shepherd, “kinda played us down at the beginning. That made us go out and play hard. It was a matter of showing people.”
Craig Tyson, a 6-foot-4-inch junior-college import, would be injured in the Razorbacks’ opening practice. That would not deter them. Corliss Williamson, a highly touted 6-7 freshmen, would go down in their season opener against Memphis State. That, too, would be ignored. Their mission, that is all that mattered to these new Razorbacks, and four days after upsetting the Tigers in their debut, they offered up another shocker by winning at Arizona.
That victory catapulted them into the rankings, and finally pushed some of them into that spotlight they so coveted. There was Shepherd, the choreographer and quicker than a hiccup. There was Darrell Hawkins, a fifth-year senior and the leading scorer. And there was Scotty Thurman, a precocious freshman with a stroke as smooth as cream spilling across a gym floor.
They catalyzed their team’s stunning start, which sent it winging, and now these new Razorbacks rush into a new year undefeated and unheralded no longer. “Richardson’s Runts,” that is what they are affectionately called, and when he speaks of them once again, Richardson himself cannot contain the affection he feels for them.
“We just got a bunch of little kids who try to get on you like fleas and not get off,” is what he finally says of them. “We don’t play like anybody else. We play scramble basketball. We play end line to end line. We scrap. We scratch. We trap. This is really fun 40 minutes of hell.
“We’re a big surprise to a lot of people. It’s surprising to me too. I’ve just enjoyed this year much more than last year. I look at it like I’m starting all over again.”
