Nolan still recalls ‘bitter and sweet’

It was 19 years ago last week that Nolan Richardson (shown) and the Arkansas Razorbacks were sitting on top of the NCAA men’s basketball mountain.
It was 19 years ago last week that Nolan Richardson (shown) and the Arkansas Razorbacks were sitting on top of the NCAA men’s basketball mountain.

It was 19 years ago last week that Nolan Richardson and the Arkansas Razorbacks were sitting on top of the NCAA men’s basketball mountain.

Richardson, who guided the Razorbacks to the NCAA Championship in 1994, spends his days now raising money for the Yvonne Richardson Memorial Foundation and fulfilling speaking engagements, the most recent of which occurred Saturday at Little Rock’s Philander Smith College.

“I think I am working more that I’ve ever worked because I run a golf tournament for my daughter’s foundation that has about 35 charities,” he said, before heading off to the Final Four in Atlanta. “At the same time, I usually do two to three speaking engagements per month.”

Losses in the national semifinals to Duke in 1990 and in the championship game to UCLA in 1995 were sandwiched between winning the title over Duke on April 4, 1994. Richardson said the 76-72 victory over the Blue Devils “seemed like it happened yesterday,” yet the loss to UCLA is still bothersome.

“Winning the 1994 championship was the greatest feeling a coach could have because that’s your ultimate goal is to win the national championship,” Richardson, 71, said. “The most disappointing part was the ’95 year when in my estimation, we should have won a second national championship. Sometimes you get the bitter and sweet together and you’re not able to walk on the clouds anymore.”

Richardson, who was fired after the 2002 season, remains the all-time winningest coach at Arkansas, compiling a 390-170 record in 17 seasons with the Razorbacks. He said time has flown since the team’s glory days in the mid-90’s especially seeing his former players’ children playing competitive basketball.

“It remains in your mind like it happened yesterday with the guys that you coached and the team that played and the players and teams that you played against that got you to the national championship,” he said.

One current event Richardson has been following is the ruckus at Rutgers - the release of a video showing former head Coach Mike Rice and an assistant physically and verbally abusing players - which led to Rice’s firing and the resignations of an assistant coach and the school’s athletic director.

“I would not condone somebody throwing balls at guys and kicking,” Richardson said. “I have scolded a player, but I know how far we need to go and when to go ahead and try to bring him back into the fold. When I see things like I saw, it just [ticks] me off.

“My assistant coaches I always told, ‘you make suggestions, I make decisions. There’s a difference in us. You’re their uncle; I’m their dad.’ I think the respect level with the older coaches was at a different level. I don’t see that today.”

Richardson and his wife, Rose, live outside Fayetteville and still have a ranch with horses, llamas and chickens, but no goats or sheep as they did a few years ago. He said he’s 15 minutes away from the university and that he drops by sometimes to see former assistant and current Razorbacks Coach Mike Anderson, who just completed his second season leading the Hogs.

Richardson said he thinks Anderson and the Razorbacks took a step forward in 2013,losing just once at home, to Syracuse, which made it to the Final Four before losing to Michigan,

“You’ve fixed up that home and you’ve really fixed it because now when teams come up there they’re not sure what they can do,” he said. “In the meantime, your pieces aren’t all there and they’re not all the guys you wanted to begin with. You have to get pieces and pieces and pieces. It’s not one of these over-the-night fixes and here we go, Mike, you’re in now, we’ve got to win.

“Even the greatest coach in America, if he ain’t got the horses, he’s going to have problems winning. If they asked me would you rather have the greatest coach or have the greatest players, I would have the greatest players cause I think I can beat you even though you are the greatest coach.”

Sports, Pages 13 on 04/08/2013

Upcoming Events