FAYETTEVILLE -- No doubt Coach Brad McMakin and his Razorbacks golfers will take some muttering what-if walks around The Blessings golf course when the University of Arkansas hosts the NCAA Men's Championship Tournament next Friday through May 24.
McMakin's men finished sixth when they needed a minimum fifth team finish at the Austin (Texas) Regional to advance as a full team to the NCAA Championship tournament they host.
Crushing though that seems in Arkansas' first NCAA Men's Golf hosting, nobody can minimize the accomplishment of McMakin's men winning the SEC Championship April 24-28 at St. Simon's Island, Ga.
It marked the Arkansas men golfers' first SEC championship since Bill Woodley's Razorbacks won the league tourney in 1995.
Barring the unfinished business that at this Friday afternoon writing awaited Coach Dave Van Horn's baseball Razorbacks on Friday night and awaits today against the Texas A&M Aggies in College Station, Texas, in the final regular-season SEC three-game series, McMakin's men have Arkansas' only SEC men's team championship for the 2018-19 academic year.
For one Razorback men's golfer, freshman Julian Perico, the 2019 collegiate season is not over.
Perico's tying for sixth place 67-72-71 210 for three rounds in Austin qualified him individually for the men's stroke play portion of the NCAA Championships at The Blessings.
R.H. Sikes, in 1963, is the Razorbacks' lone men's individual golf winner of the NCAA Tournament.
Stacy Lewis, in 2007 representing the then Lady Razorbacks, is the UA's lone individual winner of the NCAA Women's Tournament that the UA started hosting Friday through Wednesday at The Blessings.
RECRUITING THE RECRUITED
While hitting the recruiting ground running adding three transfers thus far, new Razorbacks Basketball Coach Eric Musselman asserts "no doubt" the paramount remains recruiting the mutual trust of the Razorbacks he inherited from preceding Coach Mike Anderson.
"So far so good," Musselman said during his Thursday session of one-on-one interviews with Arkansas based sportswriters and sportscasters. "Obviously, whenever there is a coaching change regardless of sport you always think you are going to have a few guys hit the (transfer) portal. I thought we had seven really, really good practices. We're trying to bond with one another. I'm still trying to get to know them, and they are still trying to get to know me. But I think there is a lot of enthusiasm with the players and certainly with myself and Coach Williams."
As of Friday, Corey Williams -- the former Chicago Bulls player, former Florida State and Oral Roberts assistant coach and former Stetson head coach -- was the only announced hire on Musselman's full-time coaching staff.
"We're probably going to have our staff complete hopefully by next week, week and a half," Musselman said Thursday. "Today is really the first that I'm starting working on that."
What's he looking for in addition to Williams whom Musselman described as "a Power Five recruiter?"
"I'd like to get another Power Five recruiter and then maybe someone from outside the box as well," Musselman said.
Sports on 05/18/2019