Well, the college basketball season is officially over (of course, for Razorback fans it's been over for a few weeks now, if not longer). So, in the absence of any games in reality it's time to look for alternatives - such as computer simulations between classic teams of the past.

The WhatIfSports.com site has a pretty amazing feature where you can match up a wide variety of teams against each other to see what would happen, even down to reading the play-by-play. And because it's done on a computer, the results are absolutely 100% accurate. Ok, maybe not, but it's still extremely addictive...definitely check it out (and let us know in the comments section if you get any interesting results of your own).

I ran some simulations between the various Hog Final Four teams, plus a few other battles, and got some interesting results. For example:

1994 Razorbacks - 85
1978 Razorbacks - 77
box score
Scotty Thurman's 22 points topped Sidney Moncrief's 21 points (and 12 rebounds!) in that one.

1994 Razorbacks - 93
1990 Razorbacks - 95
box score
Upset special! Corliss went for 32 points, but that couldn't quite top double-figure scoring efforts from Mayberry, Day (20), Bowers, Howell and Miller.

1994 Razorbacks - 102
1995 Razorbacks - 95
box score
A pretty evenly matched effort, as you'd expect. Both sets of stars had strong games, but the difference was 10 points off the bench from the 1994 version of Al Dillard.

1994 Razorbacks - 82
2009 Razorbacks - 58
box score
This should surprise no one. The less said about it, the better.

1994 Razorbacks - 114
2009 UNC Tar Heels - 111
box score
Figured I'd see how the classic Hogs stack up against the new national champs. In what has to be one of the greatest (simulated) games ever, Arkansas fought back from a five point halftime deficit to win by three in overtime. I didn't do a play-by-play for this one, but we all know who hit the winning three-pointer in OT, right? By the way, Corliss outscored Tyler Hansbrough, 35-14.

1994 Razorbacks - 103
1995 UCLA Bruins - 84
box score
Yep, that sounds about right.

Sorry about our slacker posting habits lately. Real life occasionally interferes with blogging, but we'll get back on track soon. In the meantime, a quick rundown of some recent Hog links:

* The football Hogs have opened their first spring practices under Bobby Petrino, and there have already been some changes from the old regime. Nobody covers this sort of thing better than the RazorBloggers, so be sure to check out their most recent reports here and here.

* Nolan is heading to the Hall of Fame (but someone should make sure he's not seated next to his old buddy Billy Packer at the induction dinner...that could get awkward).

* What do the Razorback Expats and Darren McFadden have in common? Aside from blazing speed and a nose for the end zone, we're both Arkansas bloggers. The difference is, D-Mac has been posting a lot more than we have lately...here's one where he breaks down his famous tattoos.

* Remember that guy who played QB before the Casey Dick era? Mitch somebody? If you do, Arkansas Sports 360 has clued us in to a radio interview he did in in New York or Seattle or wherever it is that we heard he's playing now.

* Ever since Wally clued us in to the possibility that the Oklahoma State job opening could leave to John Pelphrey's departure, we've been keeping tabs on that situation. Our Kentucky friends at A Sea of Blue have a good report on what's what.

* News flash: Bobby Petrino is the 10th best coach in the SEC.

* We'll take Whit E. Knight's three part retrospective of the 1978 Final Four season over anyone else's, but if you want more of Eddie & the Triplets, check out Bob Holt's recent article in the Dem-Gaz.

Not surprisingly, the national sports media has failed to note the most obvious story angle arising out of this year's Final Four: that all of the entries have played important roles in the Razorbacks' NCAA Tournament history. To correct this egregious instance of journalistic malpractice (and because it's a really slow time of the year for Hog news), we present this overview of the ways in which UCLA, Memphis, North Carolina and Kansas have either sent our spirits soaring or broken our hearts during March Madness.

UCLA. There's some room to quibble with the following statement, but one could reasonably say the Bruins are the alpha and the omega of the Razorbacks' glory years. In 1978, the Hogs arrived as players on the national scene when they knocked off UCLA, which was not far removed from winning an incredible 10 national championships in a 12-year period, in the semifinals of the West Regional. Seventeen years later, the O'Bannon brothers and the insufferable Jim Harrick ended the Razorbacks' quest for their own back-to-back national championships and closed the door on the magnificient Williamson-Thurman-Beck(-and-Dwight!) era. It doesn't take the most powerful observational skills to note that Hog basketball has never been the same since.

Memphis. Like UCLA, the Tigers are responsible for a glorious high and a shattering low. Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first: In 1992, then-Memphis State, led by Anferenee Hardaway, sent the Hogs packing with a second-round, 82-80 win that was sealed with a near-last-second tip-in by Tiger forward David Vaughn.

I've tried my best to completely forget about this game, but due to my employer's poor mental health benefits package, some memories still linger - for instance, the way in which Memphis native Todd Day, obviously seeking revenge for this game, looked like Michael Jordan for the first five minutes of the contest and then proceeded to score something like one point in the last 30 minutes, draw a technical for staring at the ref and foul out.

A truly weird moment took place when Isaiah Morris and Oliver Miller, both sprinting to the Arkansas basket with nary a defender in sight, couldn't decide who should take the lay-up and passed the ball back and forth until most of the other players began catching up with them. As I recall, one of them finally converted the basket, but they made the play much more interesting than it should have been. We should have known then that the Hogs were in for a long afternoon.

<!--more-->

One of the few bright spots on that day was the play of junior forward Darrell Hawkins, who until then had enjoyed an undistinguished career. With the rest of the Hogs playing as if they were ready to start their summer vacation, Hawkins drove hard to the basket play after play, drawing foul after foul - and making 12 of 13 free throws on his way to a then-career high of 22 points. Without Darrell, Memphis State might have won the game by double digits. In his senior year, Hawkins would play a leading role in one of the most inspiring seasons in Razorback history.

Now, for the good stuff. In 1995, the Razorbacks beat Memphis in the Midwest Regional semifinals. Down by 12 points with seven and a half minutes to go, the Hogs came charging back behind the inspired play of Corliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman, eventually winning 96-91 in overtime.

Memphis fans, who feel every bit as defensive and persecuted as Hog fans do, will forever bitch about the controversial hand-check foul called on Chris Garner with seconds left in regulation, the one that sent Corey Beck to the line for the game-tying free throw. Considering how poorly the Tigers played down the stretch, plus the fact that they had an overtime to right this alleged wrong ... well, let's just say that we sleep very well at night.

North Carolina. Unlike the other three schools gathering this weekend in San Antonio, the Tar Heels haven't caused us any real March angst. Sure, there was the blowout nearly two weeks ago, but any halfway sober-minded Hog fan knew that was a real possibility.

No, the Tar Heels have been in involved in the creation of some wonderful Razorback memories. There's the 1990 blowout in the Sweet 16, and the national semifinal victory five years later, which gave us Corliss' second-half domination of Rasheed Wallace and one glorious Dwight moment.

Even the 1993 loss to North Carolina in the East Regional semifinals is a positive memory for us. A surprising entry in that year's Sweet 16 and a heavy underdog against the eventual national champion, the Razorbacks battled the Tar Heels until the very last seconds and showed a national audience that they would be among the crème de la crème in the following season.

Kansas. Arkansas has played the Jayhawks only once in the NCAA Tournament, and the Razorbacks that took the court for the 1991 Midwest Regional final could have been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder when the contest was over. The Hogs pretty much played a perfect first half and went into intermission with a 47-35 lead; a second straight trip to the Final Four seemed basically signed, sealed and delivered.

The second half, however, was downright ghastly, as Kansas outscored Arkansas by 24 points to win 93-81. My biggest memory of the day was of CBS' über-smug studio analyst Mike Francesa predicting during the halftime show that the Jayhawks would come back and win, that the Hogs didn't have the toughness or intangibles or whatever to close the deal. His forecast ignited a shower of boos and not-terribly-nice comments at my family's watching party. We hated the guy ... and hated him even more when he turned out to be right.

Awhile back, it dawned on us here at RazorbackExpats.com that the Arkansas basketball program has a very special anniversary coming up this spring. Thirty years ago this March, Eddie Sutton led the Hogs to the Final Four, marking the school's first modern-era appearance in college basketball's showcase event. Whit E. Knight, one of our favorite commenters and an occasional contributor, has commemorated this seminal event with a three-part series. In this final installment (click here for the first and here for the second), he recounts the Hogs' five games in the 1978 NCAA Tournament. Many, many thanks, Whit. Once again, the stage is now yours:

Arkansas’s first-round game in the NCAA tournament was in Eugene, Ore., against unranked Weber State, which had finished the season with an impressive winning streak and its conference tournament title. Weber State kept it close early, but Brewer finally began penetrating the Wildcats’ zone, and with U.S. Reed and little-used Alan Zhan getting extended playing time while Moncrief and Schall were on the bench in foul trouble, the Hogs pulled away to a 73-52 victory. Delph finished with 20 points, Brewer 19 and Moncrief 16. The Arkansas Gazette noted that the game was remarkable for one thing: an almost total lack of intensity. That would soon change.

Next up was 10-time NCAA champion and No. 2-ranked UCLA in Albuquerque, N.M. It is hard to realize today just how daunting the game must have seemed to the Hogs and their fans. As Counce said, "From the time I was 7 until I was 17, UCLA was the national champion every year but one."

The deck headline in the Gazette sports section the day after the game said it all: "Hogs Display Courage, Poise in Record Win." Arkansas led by 10 at the half, but was down by two with 7:34 to go. The Razorbacks shook off the memory of their collapse against Wake Forest the previous year, steadied themselves, regained the lead and answered every UCLA threat the rest of the way to prevail, 74-70.

Delph, who had been snubbed out of high school by UCLA, which had no interest in a 6-4 center from Conway, was 10 of 11 from the field in the first half and finished with 23 points. He and Brewer, who scored 18, played the entire 40 minutes. Moncrief, who tallied 21, played all but the last few seconds. He had to leave the game after he suffered a mild concussion, jammed finger on his left hand and considerable bruises on his shoulder and neck when a hard foul from 6-9 All-American David Greenwood sent him crashing to the floor. Counce played 39 minutes. With Schall again on the bench with four fouls, Zahn contributed a solid 21 minutes.

It was the most physical game the Hogs had played all year, but even though they were a finesse team, they were clearly the better squad and deserved to advance. This game announced to the world that Arkansas now belonged among the elite in college basketball.

<!--more-->

Amazingly, Moncrief practiced the next day. From this point on, all the Hogs games would be broadcast nationally on NBC. The network could not have asked for a more exciting game than the regional final, which pitted Arkansas against the tournament Cinderella, Cal State Fullerton (CSF), a team that had advanced after being behind by 10 against No. 12 New Mexico and by 15 against No. 11 San Francisco.

Brewer shredded the Titans’ zone as Arkansas raced out to a 15-point halftime lead. With Moncrief admittedly playing "a step slow," CSF, the quickest team the Hogs had played all year, began a full-court press, forcing 13 Hog turnovers in the second half and steadily whittling the lead down until Keith Anderson sank a jumper to put the Titans ahead for the first time in the game, 58-57, with 1:43 left. Twenty seconds later, with CSF back in the zone, Brewer hit an uncontested 25-footer. Anderson then missed a jumper and the put-back, and the Hogs ran down the clock before the Titans fouled three times to put Counce on the line. He missed the front end of the one and one, and with no timeouts left, Anderson pushed upcourt and penetrated, looking for a shot or foul. When he went up for the shot, Moncrief, Counce and Brewer all converged on him and stripped the ball cleanly. Moncrief came up with it and passed it down court to Counce, who hit a layup to make the final score 61-58. Brewer was named the MVP of the regional, and Delph and Moncrief made the all-regional team.

The Hogs were headed to St. Louis for the national semi-finals, which for the first time that year was called the Final Four. In another first, the next day’s writeup in the Arkansas Gazette started on page one of the news section, not the sports section, and got the full Orville Henry magnum opus treatment previously reserved for Razorback football .

The victory over CSF was the game where the irrepressible NBC broadcaster Al McGuire, overly excited by the play of Brewer, Delph and Moncrief, labeled them the "Triplets," an unfortunate nickname that has persisted to this day. Most people probably think that they were called that throughout their career at Arkansas, but it was only for their last three games together. As Moncrief noted in his autobiography, the three never really thought of themselves as a special group, but if they were to be given a nickname, a much better one would be the one Orville Henry had tried to pin on them: The Basketeers (think of Moncrief as d'Artagnan). Any one of them would have been the star on another team, but under Sutton, they played with the philosophy of "one for all and all for one."

An amusing side note to the victory over CSF was Counce’s layup at the end. He had never dunked in a game and supposedly had a bet with another player and one of the managers that he would dunk sometime during the season. This was the perfect opportunity: There was no one near him, and he was on national TV, but he laid it in, afraid that if he missed the dunk and hung on the rim, the free throws from the ensuing technical would cost the Hogs the game and Sutton would kill him.

Right before the Final Four, freshman Michael Watley, upset that he was not starting and had not seen any action during the tournament except late in the first game against Weber State, decided to quit the team, depleting the already shallow pool of substitutes available.

In the Final Four, the Hogs drew Kentucky, the No. 1-ranked team in the country for most of the season. The Wildcats had two second-team All-Americans, Rick Robey and Jack Givens, and sharpshooter Kyle Macy was all-SEC. Kentucky was the consensus choice to win the championship, but most experts agreed the Hogs, with their quickness and athleticism, were the team most likely to knock them off.

The game could not have started out better for the Razorbacks, with first Brewer and then Moncrief converting steals into breakaway dunks on Kentucky’s first two possessions as Arkansas jumped out to the early lead,. But the complexion of the game changed completely when Schall picked up his fourth foul after only 6:40 of the first half. Thirty years later, Gene Keady was still bitter. "Those damn referees," he told the Downtown Tip-Off Club. "All our screens were fouls."

Sutton had to abandon his beloved man-to-man defense to play a zone and the Wildcats quickly took the lead. Meantime, the Kentucky coaching staff had figured out something no one else had all year: the importance of the low-scoring Counce to the Hogs’ offense. Everyone was so scared of what the other four could do that they would play off Counce when he had the ball on the high post, which freed him to make the pass to the next man in the offense. Despite playing forward, he led the team in assists.

Kentucky put the mammoth Robey on Counce, guarding him tightly and completely disrupting the Arkansas offense. The Hogs defense continued to give the Wildcats fits, but at one point in the first half, the Razorbacks turned it over without a shot on 8 of 9 possessions.

Kentucky maintained a small lead that they were able to stretch out to 28-21 with 5:58 left in the half. Arkansas came back to tie it at 30-30 on a 15-footer by Moncrief. Kentucky scored the only other basket in the half to take a 32-30 half-time lead. Both teams were in foul trouble, but Arkansas, with less depth, was in the more dire position; Counce had picked up his fourth foul with 3:52 left in the half.

Kentucky controlled the second half, but never could put the Hogs away. At the midway point of the period, the Wildcats led 50-42. The Wildcats took their largest lead of the game when Moncrief was called for goal-tending, making it 54-45 with 8:40 remaining.

But Arkansas started chipping away at the lead, and Zahn’s tip-in of a missed free throw by Moncrief made the score 59-58. Unfortunately, the Hogs had peaked. On a Kentucky inbounds play, Givens broke for the basket, Macy hit him with a perfect baseball pass, and Givens took it in for an easy layup to give Kentucky a 63-59 lead with 1:55 remaining. That was the backbreaker, and Kentucky won by a final score of 64-59. The disappointed Razorbacks felt they had been just one play away from winning the game.

Givens, who would go on to be named the Final Four MVP, led all scorers with 23 points. Brewer scored 16, Delph 15 and Moncrief 13, below par for them, and Schall, who only played 21 minutes, had six points. Kentucky out-rebounded the Hogs 32-26, but the most telling statistic was that Arkansas had only four assists.

In those days, the Final Four still featured a consolation game. Neither Arkansas nor Notre Dame really wanted to play the game, but it was a good thing they did because it ended with one of the greatest plays in Razorback history.

If the Hogs had thought Kentucky was physical, Notre Dame showed them what physical reallywas. Counce was taken to the hospital after suffering a blow to the abdomen in a collision with future Detroit Pistons Bad Boy Bill Lambeer with 9:35 left in the first half. Arkansas trailed by 10 midway through the half, but with Zahn in for Counce and fired up by a technical against Sutton, the Razorbacks went on an 18-4 run to take a 40-36 halftime lead. During intermission, the Hogs dedicated the game to Counce. Arkansas led for most of the second half, but Notre Dame came back behind three unanswered baskets by substitute Tracy Jackson to tie the game with 10 seconds left, 69-69.

For the final play of the game, Sutton called for a "Brewer Special." Everyone else would spread out, and as he had so many times before, Brewer would take the last shot with the game on the line. Delph took the inbounds pass, fed the ball to Brewer, and the Notre Dame defenders fled to defend the basket area, with 6-7 Bill Hanzlik on Brewer.

Brewer slowly worked the ball with his back to Hanzlik. With one second left on the clock, he turned around, leaped straight up and put up a high arching shot that was nothing but net, ripping the cords as the buzzer sounded. "It felt good when it left my hand," Brewer said. "I knew it was going in."

The next day, the front page of the Gazette had a perfectly framed picture, with Brewer at the top of his jump getting ready to release the ball, Hanzlik lunging too late to stop it, a ball boy on the side line rising in exultation and the clock showing 0:01. Before Scotty Thurman’s national championship game-winner against Duke, before Charles Ballentine’s leaner that toppled No. 1 North Carolina and Michael Jordan in Pine Bluff, before U.S. Reed’s half-court fling against Louisville, this was The Shot.

Despite only playing 29 minutes because of foul trouble, Delph led the Hogs in scoring with 21 points, with Brewer, who was named to the all-Final Four team, right behind with 20. Schall played the entire 40 minutes and had 11 rebounds. Arkansas finished the season 32-4, tying the then-NCAA record for most victories in a season.

Brewer made several All-America teams, including first-team Converse, first-team USBWA and second-team AP. Moncrief was third-team AP, and Delph was second-team Converse and honorable mention AP. All three were All-SWC for the second year in a row. Meanwhile, Sutton was named National Coach of the Year by both the AP and the UPI.

And a standard had been set that would culminate in the national championship 16 years later.

Note: In the course of writing this series, the author used information from the Arkansas Gazette archives located at the Arkansas History Commission, the University of Arkansas media guide and www.google.com.

Awhile back, it dawned on us here at RazorbackExpats.com that the Razorback basketball program has a very special anniversary coming up this spring. Thirty years ago this March, Eddie Sutton led the Hogs to the Final Four, marking the school's first modern-era appearance in college basketball's showcase event. Whit E. Knight, one of our favorite commenters and an occasional contributor, will commemorate this seminal event with a three-part series that will run on Wednesdays. In this second installment (click here for the first), he recounts the thrilling 1977-78 regular season. Many thanks, Whit. The stage is now yours:

In 1973-74, the last year that Lanny Van Eman coached the Razorbacks, a U of A student could walk up right before game time, flash her student activity card and basically have her choice of seats to watch the Arkansas basketball team play.

Not in 1977-78.

Now the Hogs were playing before packed crowds, both at home and on the road. A preseason exhibition game in Little Rock (albeit against the Russian national team) was sold out.

The previous year, the Razorbacks had caught everyone unaware. Sutton said that even he didn’t realize how good the team was until after the season. But his success was forcing the other Southwest Conference schools to hire better coaches and recruit harder to catch up. The talent level in the league was definitely up, and the Hogs would not be sneaking up on anyone this year. In addition, Arkansas’s non-conference schedule was brutal.

Arkansas began the season ranked No. 7 in the AP poll and No. 9 in the UPI (coaches’) poll, where they got one No. 1 vote. After an opening victory against Missouri State, the Hogs traveled to Little Rock to face Mississippi State, who would end up finishing second in the SEC, considered one of the strongest basketball conferences. Arkansas whipped the Bulldogs, 94-61. Hmm, maybe the Southwest Conference wasn’t just Houston and bunch of football schools after all.

The Hogs continued to cruise through their non-conference schedule. After topping Oklahoma and Kansas, they advanced to No. 3 in the polls, which is where they stood when they topped LSU in Baton Rouge, 67-62, in late December.

On New Year’s Eve, they took on Memphis State in Memphis and whipped the Tigers, 95-70, getting revenge for the previous year’s loss. Brewer had 26 points, "some of which were difficult to believe even after seeing them," according to the Arkansas Gazette’s David Smith. Schall added 20, and Counce, playing before his hometown fans, shut down the Tigers’ leading scorer. Moncrief and Delph also had big games.

Two days later, the football Razorbacks shocked Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl in one of the greatest upsets in college football history. It was beginning to look like the stars were aligned right for Arkansas.

<!--more-->

On Jan. 4, Arkansas played Hofstra in Pine Bluff, which was the only game I ever saw this team play in person. Most people expected them to be flat after playing Kansas, LSU and Memphis State in a row, but they put on an incredible show, winning 95-70. Time has dimmed my memories of that game, but I recall being dazzled by the athletic displays of Brewer, Delph and Moncrief.

Arkansas then opened its defense of its SWC title at home against Houston, which was averaging 102 points a game. The Razorback defense held the Cougars to 2 points in the first seven minutes of the game en route to a 16-2 lead. When Houston got within 11 in the second half, Moncrief, who finished with 19 points, took over the game, and the Cougars fell, 84-65. Delph tallied 24 to lead Arkansas.

The Hogs continued to cruise and had a 14-0 record when they traveled to Austin, where the Longhorns’ scrappy defense forced 19 turnovers en route to a 75-69 upset. The loss dropped Arkansas to No. 6 in the polls and left the Longhorns in first place in the conference with an unblemished record. There would be no repeat sweep of the SWC for Arkansas.

The Razorbacks then peeled off five consecutive conference wins, some of them decidedly sluggish, to set up the Feb. 1 rematch with Texas in Fayetteville, a game that brought Sports Illustrated to town. The Hogs were now ranked No. 2 and the Longhorns No. 12.

Delph scored 30 points as Arkansas prevailed 75-71, but the key to the victory was the inspirational play of freshman U.S. Reed, whom Sutton had not wanted to recruit and only reluctantly signed in August after the state’s High School All-Star Game. The Hogs trailed by as much as 11 and were down by 9 when Reed came in for Counce as a third guard in a full-court press with 13:27 left in the game. Reed was four of four from the field, grabbed two rebounds, blocked a shot and drew a charge while playing tough defense against Texas’ two veteran guards.

Of course, the next cover of Sports Illustrated featured a picture of Moncrief flying through the air before delivering a thunderous two-handed slam. Discussing Brewer, Delph and Moncrief , the accompanying article said, "All three are homegrown, all three are 6-4, all three all-conference or better. There the similarities end. Moncrief is the leaper, Delph the bomber, Brewer the leader. Off the court, Delph has four bibles and Ron Brewer has four girl friends. (Delph prefers the King James and Brewer the one back in Fort Smith.) Moncrief, meanwhile, is a one-woman man and has the team’s best stereo system."

The Gazette noted it was the first time a Southwest Conference basketball team had been featured on the cover of the magazine. In their first game after the cover story hit the newsstands, the Hogs won a thrilling 80-79 victory over Texas A&M at College Station, secured by two free throws by Brewer with 12 seconds left. There was no SI cover jinx for Moncrief, who scored 22 points while Brewer led the Hogs with 25.

In mid-February, after LSU beat Kentucky in overtime at Baton Rouge, Arkansas was voted No.1 in the AP poll, the first time a SWC team had held that spot in basketball. Arkansas’s 23-1 record was the best in the NCAA. Sutton admitted that if the Hogs played in the SEC or one of the other powerhouse conferences, their record would not have been so gaudy, but he said the Razorbacks deserved the ranking.

Unfortunately, the Hogs were not in the top spot long. On Feb. 18, in the next-to-last game of the regular season, they lost on the road to red-hot Houston, 84-75. The Cougars unleashed a press designed to keep Arkansas from inbounding the ball and otherwise "had too many guns," according to the game account in the Gazette. The loss not only ended the Razorbacks’ run at No. 1, it cost them the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament and a bye to the finals, which went to Texas on the tie-breaker.

A season-ending victory over Texas Tech put the Hogs at 26-2 going into the SWC tournament, where they handily defeated TCU and SMU to advance to a rematch against Houston in the semi-finals. With the Hogs leading 69-68 and eight seconds left in the game, Brewer, a 90 per cent free throw shooter, went to the line for a one and one. He missed the front end, Houston rebounded and the Cougars’ Cecile Rose won it with a 15-foot jump shot with two seconds on the clock. Arkansas made only 11 of 29 free throws in the game, and Counce and Delph both fouled out.

When Houston beat Texas in the tournament final, the Cougars got the conference’s automatic bid. There were only 32 teams in the NCAA tournament in those days and only 11 at-large bids available. The basketball fraternity was more closed then and the SWC, still widely considered just a football conference, had never gotten more then one bid.

Incredible as it may seem today, despite their 28-3 record and No. 7 ranking in the AP poll, the Razorbacks returned to Fayetteville uncertain that they would be in the NCAA tournament or even the NIT. Even if the NCAA extended a second bid to the SWC, there was no guarantee it would go to Arkansas over co-champion Texas.

The suspense did not last long. The call came from the NCAA: the Selection Committee had some good news and some bad news. The good news was that for the first time, the Southwest Conference would be getting two bids to the NCAA tournament, and the Razorbacks were in. The bad news was that they would be going to the West regional, which everyone agreed was the toughest, featuring five teams from the final AP poll’s top 12. The Hogs’ impressive non-conference record had given them the edge over Texas, which would go to (and win) the NIT.

Always the master of timing, the next day Attorney General Bill Clinton announced his candidacy for governor. Clinton, of course, would go on to the Governor’s Mansion and would eventually win the White House. But, on this day, it was Eddie Sutton’s Razorbacks who were the top dogs in Arkansas.

Next: The Final Four and the first "The Shot"

Awhile back, it dawned on us here at RazorbackExpats.com that the Razorback basketball program has a very special anniversary coming up this spring. Thirty years ago this March, Eddie Sutton led the Hogs to the Final Four, marking the school's first modern-era appearance in college basketball's showcase event. Whit E. Knight, one of our favorite commenters and an occasional contributor, will commemorate this seminal event with a three-part series that will run on Wednesdays. In this first installment, he describes how Sutton and the Hogs set the stage for their magical '78 season. Many thanks, Whit. Take it away:

The fall of 1977 was a time for anticipation. I had just started my dream job as a copy editor at the Arkansas Gazette, the future Mrs. Whit E. Knight was entering her senior year of the University of Arkansas, the Expats were looking forward to their last year of freedom before kindergarten, and the growing number of fans of the Arkansas Razorback basketball team were entertaining dreams of back-to-back Southwest Conference titles and a return to the NCAA tournament.

I have been a basketball fan for as long as I can remember and a Razorback basketball fan since the mid-1960s. My all-time favorite team remains Eddie Sutton’s Final Four squad of 1977-78, which set the stage for the success of the program that culminated in the 1994 national championship. It seems like yesterday, not 30 years ago, that that team left its mark on the state’s psyche.

For starters, that group had the closest identification with the state of any of the successful Razorback teams of the last 30-plus years. Its three best players — Ron Brewer of Fort Smith Northside, Marvin Delph of Conway and Sidney Moncrief of Little Rock Hall — were Arkansans. I saw all three of them play high school basketball. Jimmy Counce, the 6-7 defensive stopper, was from Memphis White Station, just across the Mississippi River from Arkansas. Steve Schall, the skinny 6-10 center, was from Raytown, Mo., just up U.S. Highway 71 (OK, 233 miles) from Fayetteville. All five of them settled in Arkansas after their playing days were over. In addition, four of the bench players were storied high school stars from Arkansas: U.S. Reed of Pine Bluff, Chris Bennett of Little Rock Catholic, James "Rocket" Crockett of Helena and Houston Dale Nutt — yes that Houston Dale Nutt — of Little Rock Central.

Brewer, Delph and Moncrief were incredibly gifted players who could have started for any other college basketball team in the country and for all three of them to be on the same squad made this a special group.

It wasn’t like Arkansas fans were unfamiliar with winning basketball — it just had been too long since they had last seen it. The University of Arkansas began playing basketball in 1924, won the Southwest Conference championship five straight times to finish out the 1920s, and continued to rack up titles through the ‘30s and the ‘40s. The 1936 Razorbacks reached the semi-finals of the tournament to select the U.S. Olympics representatives, and Arkansas made it to the semi-finals of the NCAA tournament in 1941 and 1945. But starting in the ‘50s — except for 1958, when they lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament to an Oklahoma A&M team that featured Sutton as a high-scoring guard — success eluded the program as Arkansas continually finished among the also-rans in the SWC.

After the 1973-74 Hogs won only 10 games, newly named athletic director Frank Broyles decided it was time to make a commitment to basketball. He turned things around by hiring Sutton from Creighton University, where he had just led the Bluejays to a 23-7 record and a berth in the NCAA tournament. Sutton immediately showed his eye for talent by hiring future Purdue head coach Gene Keady as an assistant and retaining Pat Foster, also a future head coach, from the previous coaching regime.

With his coaching staff set, Sutton’s next task was to halt the exodus of talented black basketball players leaving the state for other colleges.

<!--more-->

And the 1974 class had two of the best ever to play in Arkansas: Brewer and Delph. Almer Lee of Fort Smith, a fabled high school player who had been the first black player at the U of A but who had been relegated to the bench by Sutton’s predecessor, convinced Brewer that it would be different under Sutton. And with Brewer on board, Delph was quick to sign on too. It was a real act of faith of those two to agree to play at the University of Arkansas. Both of them were recruited by other, more prestigious basketball schools, and Arkansas had not had a good team in 16 years. Another key member of Sutton’s first class was the lightly-recruited Counce, who would be called on to defend the other team’s best scorer.

In Sutton’s first season, the Razorbacks finished 17-9, the most wins for Arkansas since its last NCAA team in 1957-58 and the best winning percentage since 1947-48. Brewer was academically ineligible, so he had to spend a year in junior college before transferring to Arkansas as a sophomore. That year, he and Delph were joined by Moncrief, who led the nation in field goal percentage as a freshman, and Schall as the Hogs went 19-9. You could see that something special was building in Fayetteville.

Still, I don’t think anyone expected what happened in the 1976-77 season. After they won their first five games of the season, they were ranked in the AP Top 20 for the first time in school history. With senior Steve Stroud from Batesville and Schall alternating at center, the Hogs were an amazing 16-0 in the conference, beat a good Texas team by 28 points at Austin and lost only to Memphis State in Little Rock to finish the regular season at 26-1.

But the season came to a crashing halt when they were beaten in the first round of the NCAA tournament by Wake Forest, 86-80, after leading by 13 at the half. They had 23 turnovers, 10 by Counce alone, and missed the front end of a one-and-ones numerous times in the second half. My searing memory of the game is of a news clip showing Wake Forest’s Rod Griffin, who finished with 26 points, getting the ball on the baseline, roaring past Counce like he was a statue and slamming home a powerful dunk. In his autobiography, Keady says Sutton was so upset by that loss that he refused to speak to any of the players over the summer.

Their 26-2 record and final ranking (18 in the AP poll, 7 in the UPI poll) had given the Hogs and their fans a taste of glory. With four starters returning and the loss to Wake Forest to motivate them, the Razorbacks were determined that 1977-78 would be their year.

Next: A Season to Remember