NCAA Tournament: Arkansas Euro Tour Laid Foundation For Young Razorbacks
NCAA Tournament: Arkansas Euro Tour Laid Foundation For Young Razorbacks
A summer tour through Europe set the foundation for a young Arkansas Razorbacks team to make an odds-defying run to the 2023 NCAA Tournament Sweet 16.
Arkansas basketball's road to Las Vegas began in Valencia, Spain.
The Razorbacks advanced to their second Sweet 16 weekend in as many seasons in 2023, unseating reigning national champion Kansas along the way to the West Regional in Las Vegas. They did so with a vastly different roster than a year ago, a byproduct of basketball's changing landscape.
"I promise I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for the transfer portal," said Arkansas coach Eric Musselman, who cited having previously constructed a Sweet 16 roster at Nevada around transfers like Caleb and Cody Martin. "I kind of felt like at Nevada we were at the forefront of the transfer portal."
Musselman was again active in the transfer portal in 2022, adding five newcomers via transfer. But with only four players back from the previous season's Elite Eight roster, Arkansas had other spots vacant.
Six freshmen helped fill those.
The Razorbacks lineup that took the court for the 2022-23 season opener was completely overhauled from just a few months prior and the end of the previous year's Tournament. But when the campaign tipped off, the bevy of newcomers weren't strangers, either.
An August tour through Spain and Italy provided the Hogs the opportunity to bond on the court and off.
"Anytime you can take those foreign tours, if you do them right, they can really build chemistry," said Musselman. "They can build bonding. The players get to see the coaching staff in a different light. So I do think that buy-in and trust, you can kind of get a head-start if it's handled correctly."
The Arkansas coach joked that the benefits of the European tour were most evident "when we started the year because we got out to a great start."
The Razorbacks ran to an 11-1 record by Christmas with the lone loss coming to fellow Sweet 16 Creighton at the Maui Invitational. Arkansas closed Maui beating another Sweet 16 squad, San Diego State. The Hogs also blasted NCAA Tournament team UNC Asheville, faced little resistance from Missouri Valley Conference regular-season champion Bradley, and destroyed a San Jose State team that finished in the top half of a strong Mountain West Conference.
But as Southeastern Conference competition began commensurate with the New Year, Arkansas faced tough times. The Razorbacks finished on the wrong side of .500 in league play, casting doubt not just on the '23 Hogs' ability to replicate the '22 postseason run, but if they'd make the NCAA Tournament field at all.
According to Jalen Graham — one of the program's transfers added last offseason, arriving from Arizona State — the lessons of the European tour became most clear during the midseason lulls.
After pummeling Valencia Seleccion to start the tour, 108-59, Graham said the team expected to roll throughout the tour. But with tough matchups against Catalan Elite — a 99-86 win — and a 70-59 decision against the Bakken Bears to close the expedition, Graham added that the Razorbacks came away from Europe appreciating that "every game's a new game."
That approach is at the heart of Arkansas returning to the Sweet 16.
"My mom always told me, you're only as good as your last game," said Kamani Johnson. "I have short-term memory loss when it comes to losing games or winning games, and you always gotta put on your best performance when you step on the court.
"Every new game is a new 40 minutes to grow and be better," he added. "And I think that's kind of been the difference, just not holding your head on the past and especially in March because every game could be your last game."
Meanwhile, the bond forged over these last seven months poured out in the celebration of Arkansas' defeat of Kansas in the Round of 32.
The emotional reaction from one of the few holdovers who returned to Arkansas from a season, Davonte "Devo" Davis, was a reflection of the joy, the heartache, and the team bond culminating at the end of a long journey spanning plenty of hours and thousands of miles from across the Atlantic and back.
"I didn't do all the work myself...I'm glad I got to experience it with those guys"
— Arkansas Razorbacks Men’s Basketball 🐗 (@RazorbackMBB) March 21, 2023
Relive Devo's March moment, only on @HogsPlus pic.twitter.com/BREHgHP5jh