Like it is

Nolan silences doubters with splendid showing

WALLY HALL
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

ATLANTA -- Watching Nolan Richardson the last few days has been interesting to say the least.
The fire and anger in his eyes have been as obvious as his team's drastically improved play.
For the first time in a long time, he had set out to prove something.
A cornered Richardson is a dangerous Richardson, and he obviously has felt cornered.
There are issues about his program that are under scrutiny. What he doesn't know is winning is not one of them.
For all his preaching about equal rights, Richardson's graduation rate has been abominable, especially for black athletes.
The irony of that is that Richardson is very intelligent. He used basketball to get his degree and has become wealthy and one of the icons in college basketball.
As far as coaching goes, he deserves all the respect that goes with winning games.
He is a great coach who, without a godfather, has risen to the top of his profession. That is an incredible feat because the cold, hard fact is you can trace the family trees of most coaches back to a handful of coaches.
It started years ago when Kentucky, UCLA, North Carolina and Indiana were places where potential head coaches went to train. Coaches left there and went to Kansas and Duke and other places, and the family grew.
Richardson instead went to the school of hard knocks and got to the top of the mountain by scratching and clawing. By being smart. By being tough.
He did it his way.
Yet, there he was the past four days determined to prove again he can coach.
In a news conference Saturday he talked about his coaching record and that if he were an athletic director he would want himself as a coach.
The truth is, no one has questioned his ability to coach since his third season.
It wasn't until then, when he began to bring in his own players, that it became obvious he did things differently than Eddie Sutton.
Sutton taught Razorbacks fans about defense, discipline and dedication, but also about half-court offenses, boxing out, setting screens and all the other things that had put Arkansas Razorbacks basketball on the map.
Richardson's system was different. Yes, it had defense, discipline and dedication, but as he said Saturday after beating LSU, his offense was his defense.
As the players learned his trapping, scrambling ways, that brand of basketball became exciting. More exciting than Sutton's had been in his final three years at Arkansas.
The victories began to pile up, but every year, near March, Richardson would flair.
There would be something real or imagined that set him off, and he would circle the wagons.
He would put the world on the defensive and tell his team no one respected them, and they would go out and whip anyone and almost everyone.
That's what happened in the 2000 SEC Tournament.
The kids stepped up and played great.
They did it as Richardson stood on the sidelines directing defenses.
They trapped, scrambled and pressed until fatigue forced opponents into bad decisions.
You don't want to make bad decisions against a Richardson team.
When they get you down, they kick you in the head.
Ask Kentucky, LSU and Auburn -- those teams with all the McDonald's All-Americans -- how they handle a street fight.
Those are the kids who are going to be drafted by the NBA some day.
Most of the kids on this Razorbacks team won't play professionally.
Joe Johnson will, of course. The others will have to develop, and that's another rap on Richardson, his players don't get better.
Basically that's not true. They become excellent defensive players, but that's never been high on the NBA's list of requirements.
This weekend, Richardson had his team ready for the wars. There was a fire in his gut that we may not have seen in four or five years.
It started shortly after Jason Gilbert left the team and the criticism began.
For the SEC Tournament, the fire was raging and the Hogs pulled off the miracle.
These players earned their triumphant march into tournament madness.

This article was published on Monday, March 13, 2000

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