It brings me no joy to report this, but the already-stocked Washington County prison all-star team just got a little more talented: former Hog hoopster Elmer Martin was has been sentenced to 15 years in the clink for a variety of drug-dealing charges, apparently involving cocaine and Ecstasy.

It’s a sad turn of events for Elmer. In addition to being a role player on the 1994 national championship team, he became a somewhat unlikely starter for the latter part of the 1995 season. After struggling with lineups throughout the year, Nolan found Elmer to be his good luck charm and rode that all the way to the finals (as a general Expats policy, we don’t speak of what happened then).

He later played with the Harlem Globetrotters for awhile before we lost track of him…obviously the ensuing years did not go well.

Hard to believe it was that long ago. Time flies.

Box score here. Wherever today may find you, Scotty, this Bud’s for you.

 Seriously, shouldn’t today be a state holiday?

Links to enjoy while you’re pondering the NCAA Selection Committee tea leaves:

* Careful readers of this blog will know that I’m mildly obsessed with the 1994 basketball team. So, I greatly enjoyed this Morning News article about the detente between the team (i.e., Nolan) and the school. (Thanks to commenter First Floor New Dorm for the tip on this.)

* Continuing the theme, I also enjoyed this article in Little Rock Family about Corliss’ post-NBA home life. I now await the restraining order from Corliss’ attorney.

* While writing about the heart-stopping ending to last weekend’s Vandy game, Jim Harris laments that nobody remembers Lawrence Moten’s erroneous timeout at the end of the 1995 Arkansas-Syracuse game. Don’t worry Jim - if you ever want to talk old-school bball moments I still recall that one like it was yesterday, and I’m quite sure that my fellow expat Stephen does too.

* Remember the name of new basketball recruit Aaron Ross…you’ll certainly need a good memory, because the 6′7″ guard/forward won’t be suiting up for the Hogs until 2011. That’s right, he’s only 15 years old. I hear his game his good, but he needs to work on his driving.

* Perhaps Nolan Richardson reads RazorbackExpats.com…it seems that he’s actually talking to A-State about their open coaching position.

This picture makes us happy.

It was long overdue, but the members of the 1994 Razorback basketball team got together at the Northwest Arkansas Tip-Off Club today for their first public recognition since winning the national championship. Arkansas Sports 360 has the full story.

As reported by a great series of articles on Arkansas Sports 360, Nolan Richardson spoke at the Northwest Arkansas Tip-Off Club earlier today, and his remarks indicated that he’s put a lot of the bitterness from the last several years behind him. He led off his speech with a hog call (that video really should find its way to YouTube) and followed up by speaking in depth about his positive feelings for the team, the state and the fans.

Personally, I’ve always felt like Nolan’s exit from the team and the subsequent treatment of his legacy (in which the school shamefully ignored the 1994 team on the 10-year anniversary of Arkansas’ only undisputed major sport national championship) to be one of the sadder and more disappointing things about Razorback sports. Regardless of who was responsible for the nastiness and negativity on either side, it just felt wrong.

In his article on the speech, Arkansas Sports 360 editor Jim Harris sums up the situation more eloquently than I could, so I’ll just quote him directly:

“It’s time for Arkansas to honor the 1994 national championship team with a big to-do next season, the 15th anniversary. It’s time to name the basketball court after Nolan Richardson, because whether or not you agreed with his feelings about his ouster in 2002, it’s Richardson’s style and winning that created the need for 19,000 seats for basketball spectators instead of the 9,000 in the building that preceded it.

It’s Eddie Sutton who made Arkansans love basketball and travel in great numbers in March, but it’s Richardson who made them go crazy about it and expect to contend for national championships regularly. It’s why Stan Heath’s 21 wins and an NCAA Tournament appearance last year wasn’t good enough. It’s why much is expected of first-year coach John Pelphrey.”

That sounds right to me. Let’s leave all the bad feelings in the past and recognize the man and his teams for what they accomplished. It’s about time!

As you probably know, Corey Beck was shot in a random attempted robbery in Memphis several weeks ago. The good news is that he made it out of that incident alive. The bad news is that his injuries are severe (his left wrist was halfway blown off and his vision is impaired) and expensive (to the tune of $96,000 in medical bills and counting). So, he needs our help. [big thanks to the Hog Blogger for posting this story]

You can donate to his recovery at the Corey Beck Medical Fund, which has been set up at the Bank of America. Unfortunately there isn’t an online option, but I called their customer service and learned there are two ways you can contribute:

1. Walk into any B of A nationwide and tell them you want to donate to the Corey Beck Medical Fund. They should be able to look up the account number and process the donation.

2. You can also mail a check to any B of A branch along with instructions that you want to donate to this fund and, again, they’ll be able to make sure it gets to the right place. To save you the time of looking up an address, here’s the main branch in Little Rock:

Bank of America
c/o Corey Beck Medical Fund
200 W Capitol Ave
Little Rock AR 72201
(if you have questions, call 501.378.1267, then extension 4)

Corey Beck was the heart and soul of those great mid-90s Razorback teams, and he personally brought me many happy moments during those years. So, let’s all take a few minutes and share whatever we can share to repay him for that and help him out during this tough time.

All this info comes courtesy of an interview he did with the Zone, which was then posted on WooPig.net. It’s kind of long, but is definitely worth a listen if you have a few minutes. The part towards the end where he talks about Nolan’s love and generosity since the shooting is particularly moving.

During the weekend of the South Carolina game, I had the pleasure of returning to the Natural State (Little Rock, to be specific) for the first time in about a year. While there, I managed to make note of a few blog-worthy observations:

* The Clinton Presidential Library has some neat tidibts for Hog fans. My favorites were these notes back & forth from Pres. Clinton and Nolan in March 1994 (plus this other page with all the signatures from the 1993-94 bball team). The best part, obviously, is the handwritten “Win the NCAA!” at the end of Clinton’s letter…I guess the team took that Presidential order pretty seriously. And am I crazy or did Nolan misspell “tough”?

* I really should watch games with my dad more often. Before the South Carolina game, the most recent Razorback game we had watched together was last year’s triumphant win over Tennessee (which seems like ancient history now, of course). Is it a coincidence that the Hogs’ only two quality wins in the last 365 days occurred when I watched games with my dad? I think not…you are all welcome to take up a collection to fund me returning to LR more often.

* Wally Hall looks different than I remembered. I’m so used to the bearded Wally in our iconic Wally Watch graphic that I barely recognized the shaved, glasses-wearing Wally staring out at me from the Democrat-Gazette. For a second, I thought Leonard Maltin had taken over the “Like It Is” column (and yes, I know Leonard Maltin has a beard…just bear with me).

To be an Arkansas fan is to be convinced that other sports fans and the national sports media don’t give the Razorback program the respect it deserves. I guess it’s in part the consequence of growing up in a small and often-maligned state.

In the fall of 1994, however, as the Hogs were gearing up to try to defend the national basketball championship they had won months earlier, the sports media was anything but dismissive of the Razorbacks. In fact, at least one writer was heaping an amount of praise on them that looks pretty over-the-top 13 years later.

In an edition of Sport magazine that I bought in the fall of 1994 and rediscovered during a recent visit home, Darryl Howerton penned an article entitled, “Hog Wild: Arkansas is Loaded with Pro Prospects, and the NBA is Waiting with Open Arms.”

Here’s a sample paragraph: ” Arkansas’ team photo looks more like an NBA scouts’ most-wanted list than a collegiate squad. If you didn’t know better, you might think the 1994-95 Razorbacks were one of the new expansion clubs joining the NBA next fall.”

Here’s another: “‘To give you an idea of how loaded Arkansas is, let’s just say I can kill six or seven trips around the country by going to just one game in Fayetteville,’ says an NBA Western Conference scout.”

(Read on …)

Corliss Williamson made his Razorback debut on Dec. 2, 1992, and appeared for the last time in an Arkansas uniform on April 3, 1995. In between, Big Nasty and Co. treated Hog fans to the most outstanding and exciting era in the basketball program’s history.

In Part 1 of our tribute to the recently-retired Williamson, John provided a top-notch overview of Corliss’ college and pro careers. In part 2, I’ll nerd out a little bit and look at some of Big Nasty’s most memorable games as a Hog. This is a topic that I could go on about for far too long and bore many people to tears. To keep the post somewhat manageable, I’ve decided to focus on three games from each of Corliss’ three seasons on the Hill.

Let’s get this party started, shall we?

1992-93

* Arkansas 81, Memphis State 76; Dec. 2, 1992; Fayetteville - Darrell Hawkins (20 points) and Roger Crawford (18 points) received most of the credit for this rousing, come-from-way-behind upset of the No. 8 ranked Tigers, but Corliss, in his first game in a Razorback uniform, showed that he was more than capable of living up to the considerable hype that accompanied his arrival on campus. Before having to leave the game in the second half with a broken foot, Corliss scored 13 points and grabbed 6 rebounds to help the unranked Hogs, who trailed by as much as 20 points in the first half and 14 points at halftime, get the post-Day-Mayberry-Miller era off to an unexpectedly good start.

* Arkansas 101, Kentucky 94; Feb. 10, 1993; Fayetteville - In his sixth game back since returning from his foot injury, Corliss scored a then-career high 22 points and grabbed eight rebounds to help No. 14 Arkansas defeat the No. 2-ranked Wildcats. The Hogs held a 13-point lead with just less than five minutes to go, but Kentucky came back to narrow the deficit to within four with more than a minute remaining. However, Big Nasty hit some key free throws and threw down one monster slam dunk over Jamal Mashburn to help the Razorbacks hold on for their last victory over a ranked opponent in Barnhill Arena.

(Read on …)

Rivals.com has ranked the top 10 college basketball teams of the 64-team NCAA Tournament era. Topping the list are the 1990 UNLV Rebels, who compiled a 35-5 record and stomped Duke 103-73 in an NCAA finals that bored the hell out of everyone outside of Las Vegas.

The 1994 national champion Arkansas Razorbacks are ranked No. 8 on the list. In the accompanying profile of the team, former Duke star Grant Hill gushes, “I remember watching the film of Arkansas as we prepared to play them and seeing all the weapons they had. You realized they could embarrass you. They were the kind of team that could blow you out.” Did I mention that I’ve always liked Grant Hill? (Of course, Arkansas did anything but embarrass the Blue Devils in that year’s tournament finals, as the two battled to the end, setting the stage for Scotty Thurman’s late-game heroics and the Razorbacks’ One Shining Moment.)

I didn’t leave the list feeling all fuzzy and gooey inside, though. Ranked one spot ahead of the Hogs is the team that foiled their attempt at back-to-back titles and a little slice of hoops history: the evil 1995 UCLA Bruins. Thurman, for one, doesn’t give his victorious opponent too much credit, telling Rivals.com, “If we had played our best ball, we would have won easy.”

Let go of your pain, Scotty - and when you do, let me know how you did it.