I thought it might be interesting in the long off season to discuss the status of some of the other programs in the SEC or other interesting programs from around the country. Starting with Arkansas.
Recent history- Some of us remember when Arkansas was a top 5 program in the country. Pretty amazing that it has now been 22 years since their last Sweet 16 appearance. That is a pretty bad run. I think it is the second longest Sweet 16 drought in the SEC. In seven years under Mike Anderson, they have been to the tournament three times and are 2-3. Five seed in 2015, eight seed in 2017 and seven seed in 2018.
2018- 2019 outlook- The good news for Arkansas is that Gafford surprised almost everybody by passing on the draft to come back for his sophomore year. Really talented player. Bad news (for them) is they lost almost everybody else who matters. They were heavily reliant on some really good college guards. Barford, Macon and Beard are all gone. There is nobody else returning besides Gafford that averaged more than 6 points or 4 rebounds per game. I don't think there is a ton of high end talent coming up right behind either. I believe Gafford is the only top 100 national recruit on the roster. They signed one fairly highly regarded JUCO named Mason Jones. Recruiting JUCO's is kinda their thing; Barford and Macon were both JUCO's as well. But this looks like a bottom third of the SEC team to me.
Medium Term Outlook- The 2018 signing class is very good by recent standards. Five guys ranked between 100-200 nationally. Those are the type of guys that you wouldn't expect to be plus SEC players their first year, but if most of them stick around and develop, could be the core of a good team by the time they are upperclassmen.
Long Term- I thought for a long time that Arkansas was the second best "basketball school" in the SEC based on fan support, etc, and it would only be a matter of time before they were back to being one of the top 3-4 programs in the SEC. At this point, I just don't know what the formula for high level success is there. They don't recruit that well because they just don't have that much in state talent. I don't think they will ever have the cachet to be a big national recruiter. In their glory days in the 90's, they mostly relied on in state guys (Corliss Williamson) and guys in the general region (Scotty Thurman was form N Louisiana, Todd Day from Memphis, Lee Mayberry from Tulsa). Recently they have just gotten modestly rated recruits that fit in their system and patched in with JUCO's. Good enough to get you into the tournament most years but maybe not much more.
Your thoughts?
Recent history- Some of us remember when Arkansas was a top 5 program in the country. Pretty amazing that it has now been 22 years since their last Sweet 16 appearance. That is a pretty bad run. I think it is the second longest Sweet 16 drought in the SEC. In seven years under Mike Anderson, they have been to the tournament three times and are 2-3. Five seed in 2015, eight seed in 2017 and seven seed in 2018.
2018- 2019 outlook- The good news for Arkansas is that Gafford surprised almost everybody by passing on the draft to come back for his sophomore year. Really talented player. Bad news (for them) is they lost almost everybody else who matters. They were heavily reliant on some really good college guards. Barford, Macon and Beard are all gone. There is nobody else returning besides Gafford that averaged more than 6 points or 4 rebounds per game. I don't think there is a ton of high end talent coming up right behind either. I believe Gafford is the only top 100 national recruit on the roster. They signed one fairly highly regarded JUCO named Mason Jones. Recruiting JUCO's is kinda their thing; Barford and Macon were both JUCO's as well. But this looks like a bottom third of the SEC team to me.
Medium Term Outlook- The 2018 signing class is very good by recent standards. Five guys ranked between 100-200 nationally. Those are the type of guys that you wouldn't expect to be plus SEC players their first year, but if most of them stick around and develop, could be the core of a good team by the time they are upperclassmen.
Long Term- I thought for a long time that Arkansas was the second best "basketball school" in the SEC based on fan support, etc, and it would only be a matter of time before they were back to being one of the top 3-4 programs in the SEC. At this point, I just don't know what the formula for high level success is there. They don't recruit that well because they just don't have that much in state talent. I don't think they will ever have the cachet to be a big national recruiter. In their glory days in the 90's, they mostly relied on in state guys (Corliss Williamson) and guys in the general region (Scotty Thurman was form N Louisiana, Todd Day from Memphis, Lee Mayberry from Tulsa). Recently they have just gotten modestly rated recruits that fit in their system and patched in with JUCO's. Good enough to get you into the tournament most years but maybe not much more.
Your thoughts?