* As you’ve probably seen, the Hogs have been picked to finish last in the SEC West by just about every prognosticator out there. Now, the no respect train continues to roll as Sports Illustrated has ranked Arkansas 69th out of the 119 D-I teams. For those of you scoring at home, that’s immediately behind noted football powers like Bowling Green, Ball State and, um, Louisville.

* After slandering Dwight Stewart earlier in the week, those sky blue snobs over at Tar Heel Fan have taken aim at another Razorback icon. Reporting on their 1993 team, they write: “…the Heels faced Arkansas and the ever talkative Nolan Richardson. The Razorbacks’ coach took the opportunity to make all sorts of statements in the media which UNC kindly stuffed back in his face by beating Arkansas in the Sweet Sixteen.” If I may practice a bit of armchair psychology, I’d guess that they know deep down that the Hog teams of that era were better than their UNC counterparts, and are aghast at the thought of finishing behind those non-pedigreed ruffians.

* Remember the names Michael Dyers and Claude Johnson. This article says they’re players Petrino has to sign in 2010. Yes, 2010. And yes, he might be at his second post-Razorback job by that point.

* It’s nice to see the national media catching on to what we Arkies have known all along: D-Mac can play some football. And he’s not quite the thug he was made out to be, either.

* In addition to being a fairly decent football player, D-Mac isn’t too shabby as a pitchman, either. Check this out (link courtesy of Arkansas Sports 360):

It’s no secret that we here at RazorbackExpats consider Dwight Stewart not only a great figure in Razorback history, but possibly one of the finest Americans ever. And we are shocked (shocked!) to discover that there are people out there who don’t share this view - namely North Carolina Tar Heel fans.

The blog Tar Heel Fan is ranking the North Carolina basketball teams of the past 27 seasons. Coming in at No. 6 on the list is the 1995 squad, which, you may recall, was defeated by the Razorbacks in the Final Four.  

The blogger describes the last few seconds of the first half of that game (click here for a visual reminder) this way: “Arkansas with barely enough time to get the ball upcourt inbounded it to that tub of a human being Dwight Stewart who just chucked it from about 60 feet or so and made the shot at the buzzer.”

Tub of a human being!?! Them’s fighting words. And believe us, after growing up on the mean streets of The Heights and Pleasant Valley and attending a private liberal arts college, we know a thing or two about throwing our fists around.

The crimes against humanity continue in the comments thread, where one commenter says, “I hate Dwight Stewart to this day.”

 Honestly, we are speechless … except to say this: “Go Duke.”

Really, how could you even hope to defend against this? I feel a little sorry for #40 in this picture…he obviously drew the short straw in the locker room before the game.

• Forward Michael Sanchez, who redshirted last season and will be a freshman this fall, is starting and playing pretty solid ball for a team of college players that is touring China. Who knows what the competition is really like - and it’s not like Sanchez is setting the world on fire - but it’s got to be good for him to get a chance to shake off the rust.

• Why does John McDonnell hate America?

• Check out ArkansasSports360.com for a funny take on the latest episode in the long-running “Razorbacks in Jail” saga. And once you get to that page, be sure and click on the Corey Beck link. If you do, you’ll notice that Corey is tipping the scales at nearly 270 pounds these days! We shudder to think what his good friend and Expat fav Dwight Stewart now weighs.

• Harry King examines what the Atlanta Falcons’ signing of draftee Matt Ryan means for Darren McFadden as well as the short life expectancy of NFL running backs.

• In honor of the NBA playoffs, we present this pop quiz: Name the four former Razorbacks who have won NBA championships. First one with the correct answer wins an all-expenses-paid trip to the beautiful Sandals Grande Antigua resort.*

(* - not true)

Not surprisingly, the national sports media has failed to note the most obvious story angle arising out of this year’s Final Four: that all of the entries have played important roles in the Razorbacks’ NCAA Tournament history. To correct this egregious instance of journalistic malpractice (and because it’s a really slow time of the year for Hog news), we present this overview of the ways in which UCLA, Memphis, North Carolina and Kansas have either sent our spirits soaring or broken our hearts during March Madness.

UCLA. There’s some room to quibble with the following statement, but one could reasonably say the Bruins are the alpha and the omega of the Razorbacks’ glory years. In 1978, the Hogs arrived as players on the national scene when they knocked off UCLA, which was not far removed from winning an incredible 10 national championships in a 12-year period, in the semifinals of the West Regional. Seventeen years later, the O’Bannon brothers and the insufferable Jim Harrick ended the Razorbacks’ quest for their own back-to-back national championships and closed the door on the magnificient Williamson-Thurman-Beck(-and-Dwight!) era. It doesn’t take the most powerful observational skills to note that Hog basketball has never been the same since.

Memphis. Like UCLA, the Tigers are responsible for a glorious high and a shattering low. Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first: In 1992, then-Memphis State, led by Anferenee Hardaway, sent the Hogs packing with a second-round, 82-80 win that was sealed with a near-last-second tip-in by Tiger forward David Vaughn.

I’ve tried my best to completely forget about this game, but due to my employer’s poor mental health benefits package, some memories still linger - for instance, the way in which Memphis native Todd Day, obviously seeking revenge for this game, looked like Michael Jordan for the first five minutes of the contest and then proceeded to score something like one point in the last 30 minutes, draw a technical for staring at the ref and foul out.

A truly weird moment took place when Isaiah Morris and Oliver Miller, both sprinting to the Arkansas basket with nary a defender in sight, couldn’t decide who should take the lay-up and passed the ball back and forth until most of the other players began catching up with them. As I recall, one of them finally converted the basket, but they made the play much more interesting than it should have been. We should have known then that the Hogs were in for a long afternoon.

(Read on …)

To generate some positive energy before tomorrow’s showdown with UNC, view this wonderful footage of Dwight Stewart’s beyond-half-court bomb that ended the first half of the Hogs-Heels match-up in the 1995 Final Four. The audio is a little choppy, but the video is pure Hog heaven. God bless you, Sy Dog.