Eric Musselman shares how Purdue exhibition came about

Eric Musselman and the Arkansas Razorbacks are expected to be a force on the college basketball hardwood yet again this year after leading the Hogs to back-to-back Elite Eight appearances in the NCAA Tournament. Musselman embraces playing high-level competition each year during the regular season, because it prepares his team for the most important time of the year, the NCAA Tournament. Arkansas will welcome the Purdue Boilermakers to Bud Walton Arena on Oct. 28th in a charity exhibition match. Recently, Eric Musselman talked about how the matchup was able to take place.

“The only connection really with Coach Painter is just Nike puts on an event with a certain group of coaches,” Musselman began. So, I’ve been a part of that with him. And his wife and you know, but nothing substantial other than the fact that from afar, you’re talking about one of the premiere programs in the country….When we met about it as a staff, it was how can we play a Top 3 team in the nation who would be willing to play us?”

“And how could we possibly do that in front of our home fans because last year we played Texas, who was a Top 10 team for most of the year. How could we get a team in Bud Walton? And Todd Lee did a great job of working the exhibition game for us. And then doing that with the administration and Purdue’s administration. I think it’s gonna be a great game for Purdue, for Arkansas, for our fan base, as well. Because it’s good to be able to get a Big Ten team in here that, I’m gonna assume comes in anywhere from 1 to 3,” Musselman said.

“And they’re really unique. They have incredible shooters, they were young last year. They have a player that could be Player of the Year (Zach Edey) in college basketball who’s overly unique in how you have to prepare for him. So, I think it gives us a lot of really great things. And we referenced our Texas game even as we got ready for the NCAA Tournament about things Texas did. About physicality. So hopefully, this is a game that we’re gonna able to reference throughout the course of the season,” the Hogs’ head man said.

The Hogs have another loaded recruiting class coming in this fall. They’ve got two freshmen coming in that were ranked as four-star prospects in the 2023 cycle (Baye Fall and Layden Blocker), according to the On3 Industry Rankings. They’ve also got two players they landed from the portal that were ranked as four-star prospects when they were in high school, according to the On3 Industry Rankings.