Eric Musselman credits players for Arkansas' success in March

Arkansas is through to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the third straight season. The previous two seasons, the Razorbacks advanced to the Elite Eight and bowed out one win away from a Final Four and will get another shot at it this coming weekend. What makes this year different for Arkansas is that they’re lower seeded than they were in 2021 and 2022. The Hogs had a bumpy regular season and finished middle of the road in the SEC, earning just a No. 8 seed in the tourney.

Well, Arkansas has performed more like the team most expected in the preseason in the postseason and handled a good Illinois team before clawing back from a late 10-point deficit to beat defending champion Kansas in the Round of 32. Now, Eric Musselman’s group gets to face a dangerous UCONN team for a chance at a third straight Elite Eight berth.

After the game, Coach Musselman got up to his typical antics: screaming, taking his shirt off, jumping on the scorer’s table — all that good stuff. Whether neutral fans hate him or love him for such passionate behavior, he sure knows how to win in this all-important month. In the postgame presser, he was asked how he keeps getting it done.

Musselman’s answer:

“Really good players. You can’t win at any level, CYO, grade school, high school, college, pro, G-League, national team, unless you have really good players. And we have really good players. We have guys that have insane buy-in, incredible buy-in. Like I said, we’re still practicing today with the short turnaround and an early game and guys have played a lot of minutes but, you know, they felt like going on the floor today would help them or put them in a better position to win.”

Eric Musselman then went on to further compliment his team for staying the course despite a real tough stretch of play during the conference slate.

“I feel fortunate to coach this team, last year’s team, high character guys that hate to lose and really compete. Start of conference play didn’t look good for us and we kinda hung around and won some big games and lost some really tough games against some really good competition. We told everybody, don’t listen to the noise. Worry about what’s going on internally in this locker room and let’s just keep getting better. Like I said, I thought our Illinois game was as good of a game we played. I thought tonight in the second half we played as good of a game as we have all year.”

Arkansas peaking at the perfect time with a roster that has as much talent and athleticism as anyone. On to Las Vegas for these guys.