FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — When Eric Musselman bolted out of town Thursday for California, all eyes almost immediately turned to Ole Miss coach Chris Beard. A lot of speculation and social media chatter “knew” he had an interest in coaching the Arkansas Razorbacks.
If he had the first call to wrap up what a lot of people — including a lot of the media in Oxford — assumed he was already making plans to be in Fayetteville soon, maybe even Friday. Well, that apparently isn’t going to happen now.
HOTTY TODDY
Great times ahead in Oxford. We are just getting started. #WinInTheSip#Culture pic.twitter.com/u8rRwmfkSC— Chris Beard (@CoachBeard) April 5, 2024
Now things will start to get interesting in the hutn for the next coach. If anything a lot of Razorback fans don’t seem to want to remember athletics director Hunter Yurachek doesn’t always do things the way most people assume on these coaching searches.
We get to start rounding up the usual names on the lists everybody tends to come up with right now. This list is in no particular order or ranking, but these are the names getting out there a lot right now:
• Jerome Tang, Kansas State: His biggest claim to fan from folks mentioning him is he was an assistant coach when Baylor won a national championship a few years ago. Even though his head coaching experience is not as big, it has a lot of the main similarities with former Razorbacks coach Mike Anderson. We saw how that played out.
• Will Wade, McNeese State: With a buyout just over $1 million and NIL basically rendering what got him in hot water at LSU now legal, a lot of the sentiment is he’s worth whatever small amount of complaining comes from it. The question is what can they do going forward and can he accomplish with Arkansas what he did at LSU? Just a question to throw out there.
• Chris Jans, Mississippi State: Exactly how that name has popped up on some of these lists is a little surprising. He’s a sitting coach in the SEC, has a buyout to match and has only won one NCAA Tournament game in six attempts. Not sure that’s a track record justifying a buyout that big.
• Bucky McMillen, Samford: There’s a wildcard pick you probably didn’t expect to hear. You will in the future because he’s getting noticed by a lot of people. Fans probably won’t be too happy to hear that name, thinking they can do better, but apparently they can’t quickly. Whether that’s because of affordability or anything else is not known.
But the one name most thought was almost a guaranteed deal won’t be coming anytime soon. He made that clear himself on social media Friday afternoon.
