HOG CALLS

Hogs excited for improvements, future

— If they offered a trophy for most improved men’s outdoor track program, surely the Arkansas Razorbacks would win it for 2011.

Coach Chris Bucknam’s Razorbacks rose from seventh in 2010 to win the SEC, unquestionably the toughest league in college track.

At the four-day NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships concluded Saturday in Des Moines, Iowa, Arkansas acceleratedfrom zero points for 2010 to 25 points for 10th in the nation.

The Hogs would have scored more had this year’s meet not so vastly improved from last year.

Arkansas’ 4x100 relay of Caleb Cross, Neil Braddy,LaShawn Butler and Marek Niit become a NCAA footnote, sprints coach Doug Case said, for running the fastest prelim time that did not qualify for a NCAA 4x100 final.

The quartet ran a season’s best 39.29 to finish ninth, with eight advancing to finals.

Freshman Kevin Lazas, Arkansas’ first decathlete qualifying for the NCAA Outdoor with a school record 7,703 decathlon points and runner-up at the SEC meet, tallied 7,802 in Des Moines.

It netted another school record, but no team points, placing 10th.

“He would have been third last year,” field events coach Travis Geopfert said.

Following Ben Skidmore, Niit and Travis Southard, Braddy, the freshman from Fort Smith Southside anchored Arkansas’ 4x400 relay to fifth in Des Moines in 3:03.59, the UA’s third-fastest ever 4x400.

“That’s the fastest relay I ever coached,” Case said.

Help is on Arkansas’ way for 2012, including national high school pole vault record-setter Andrew Irwin of Mount Ida and national high school record-setting decathlete Gunnar Nixon of Edmond, Okla.

“We are excited about the future,” Bucknam said. “I feel confident about the program and where it’s going.”

Improved as these Hogs are in 2011, they would have been decent for 2010 if just two on campus were available.

Third-year sophomore Niit, the 2011 SEC 200-meter dash champion and NCAA Outdoor 200 runner-up Saturday in Des Moines, had to sit out 2010 regrouping academically. Niit will start 2012 among the nationally elite.

UA senior scholar-athlete Dorian Ulrey, second in Saturday’s 1,500 at Des Moines, was ailing and fatigued by outdoor 2010 after grueling cross country and indoor campaigns off a 2009 outdoor summer extended by the World Championships.

Bucknam wisely redshirted him for a final outdoor 2011. Ulrey’s 25 SEC points in three events led Arkansas to its 2011 SEC championship.

At Des Moines, Ulrey craved to finish with a first-place flourish but says “Thank God I have the one (his 2010 NCAA Indoor 3,000 title). Because I don’t think I would have survived if I didn’t.”

Ulrey would have survived and made Arkansas thrive.

Distance running great Niall O’Shaughnessy, a 3:55 miler in the 1970s, never won a national title for retired Arkansas coach John McDonnell. Yet O’Shaughnessy remains revered as the pioneer for McDonnell’s 40 national championships and 84 conference championships.

Coming with Bucknam from Northern Iowa, Ulrey forever is Bucknam’s Arkansas pioneer, his Niall O’Shaughnessy.

Having watched O’Shaughnessy and Ulrey perform on the track and lead off the track, that’s a comparison as good as it gets.

Sports, Pages 16 on 06/13/2011

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