Musselman on new assistant coach, roster, schedule, even haircuts (no, seriously)
Razorback coach Eric Musselman talked at a Zoom press conference late Thursday afternoon about new assistant coach David Patrick and other topics down to even his haircut (that’s near the end).
Musselman hires Riverside head coach as Hogs’ associate head coach
FAYETTEVILLE — California-Riverside head coach David Patrick was named associate head coach at Arkansas, according to a press release from coach Eric Musselman on Wednesday afternoon.
Patrick was a finalist for two national coach of the year awards this past season.
“He will fit seamlessly into our basketball family,” Musselman said in the release. “His basketball knowledge is excellent and he is someone I have great comfort discussing all the intricacies that go with building a winning program.”
Musselman and Patrick previously worked together at LSU, helping the Tigers reach the 2015 NCAA Tournament. Patrick was also responsible for the recruitment of 2016 number one overall NBA Draft pick Ben Simmons, while at LSU.
Here is Patrick’s comment that was also included in the release:
“I am honored to be reuniting with Coach Musselman at the University of Arkansas,” Patrick said. “I am incredibly grateful for my time as head coach at UC Riverside and want to sincerely thank every single person that I had the pleasure of working with during my time there. I especially want to thank (Director of Intercollegiate Athletics) Tamica Smith Jones and the administration at UC Riverside for giving me the opportunity of serving as their head coach, as well as our student-athletes, for without you, I would not be in this position. The chance to help lead the historic Arkansas program, be close to home, and return to SEC basketball was one that my family and I could not turn down. We cannot wait to get down to Fayetteville and I cannot wait to get to work to continue pushing the Razorback program forward.”
Prior to the season being cut short due to COVID-19, the Highlanders received invitations to play in the College Insider Tournament (CIT) and the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) postseason tournaments.
A Melbourne, Australia, native and current assistant coach for the Australian Men’s National Basketball Team, Patrick helped lead the Australia Boomers to a fourth-place finish in the 2019 FIBA World Championships.
In 2019 Patrick also helped guide the Boomers to a historic 98-94 win over Team USA for the first time in history.
Patrick coached NBA champions and Australian National Team guards Patty Mills and Matthew Dellavedova during their collegiate careers at Saint Mary’s College (Calif.) Patrick’s reputation as a savvy and experienced recruiter is attributed to his ability to attract top talent.
At LSU, he was integral in landing the nation’s number five and number three-ranked recruiting classes of 2013 and 2015, respectively.
Patrick posted a 27-38 record at UC-Riverside, the best two-year start in school history. He inherited a program that won just nine games the season prior to his arrival and quickly turned the program around.
The Highlanders won 17 games last season, which tied the most wins in Division I program history. The Highlanders led the Big West Conference and ranked eighth nationally in scoring defense (60.6 ppg).
The squad additionally led the Big West in 3-point field goal attempts (722) while ranking second in the league in defensive rebounding (27.03 avg.), field goal percentage defense (.404), rebound margin (+5.5), 3-point field goals made (7.9 per game/254 total) and total rebounds (35.78 per game/1,145 total).
In his first season at UC-Riverside, the Highlanders broke several program records including 279 three-point shots made, culminating in a Big West-best .379 three-point shooting percentage (ranked 28th nationally).
Prior to his time at UC Riverside, Patrick made an immediate impact in his two seasons as assistant head coach at TCU, playing a significant role in the second-largest turnaround in program history.
The 2016-17 Horned Frogs went 24-15, good for a 12-game improvement over the previous year. The final win of the season came in the championship game of the NIT (National Invitation Tournament), an 88-56 victory over Georgia Tech that gave TCU its first ever postseason championship.
The 24 wins were also the second-most in school history. The following season (2017-18), TCU went 21-12 and qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 20 years, earning a number six seed.
Patrick spent four years at LSU, the final two as assistant head coach, helping the Tigers reach the 2014 NIT and 2015 NCAA Tournament.
He served as a scout for the Houston Rockets for two seasons (2010-12) and as an assistant coach for four years at Saint Mary’s (2006-10). During his tenure in Moraga, the Gaels had school record-setting seasons in 2008 and 2010.
Both teams finished with 28-win seasons and the 2010 squad made it to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. He began his coaching career at Nicholls State (2005-06).
Patrick was born in Bermuda and grew up in Australia. He played one season at Syracuse, with his team reaching the 1996 NCAA Championship game, and then was a point guard at UL Lafayette from 1997-2000.
He also played four years professionally in Australia, England and Spain.
Following a stint playing with the Australian Junior National Team, Patrick came to the United States in 1994. As a high schooler, he was selected as the Louisiana Player of the Year after leading Trafton Academy to the state quarterfinals.
That same year, he was named the district’s MVP, earned a First Team All-Parish selection, and was chosen to participate in the Louisiana State High School All-Star Game.
Patrick is married to the former Cassie Frank of Oberlin, La., and they have two daughters.
THE PATRICK FILE
Personal
• Hometown: Melbourne, Australia
• High School: Chapel Trafton (Baton Rouge, La.)
• Alma Mater: UL Lafayette (2000)
Playing Experience
• 1995-96: Syracuse – reached 1996 NCAA Final Four (national runner-up)
• 1996-2000: UL Lafayette (then known as Southwestern Louisiana) – sat out the 1996-97 season per NCAA transfer rules; reached the 2000 NCAA Tournament
• 2000-01: Canberra Cannons (Australia’s National Basketball League)
• 2001-03: Chester Jets (British Basketball League)
• 2003-05: Amics del Bàsquet Castelló (Spanish Basketball Federation)
Coaching Experience
• 2005-06: Nicholls State (Assistant Coach)
• 2006-10: Saint Mary’s (Calif.) (Assistant Coach) – 2008 & 2010 NCAA Tournaments (2010 Sweet 16); 2009 NIT
• 2010-12: Houston Rockets (Personnel Scout)
• 2012-14: LSU (Assistant Coach) – 2014 NIT
• 2014-16: LSU (Assistant Head Coach) – 2015 NCAA Tournament
• 2016-18: TCU (Assistant Head Coach) – 2018 NCAA Tournament; 2017 NIT Champion
• 2018-20: UC-Riverside (Head Coach) – 2020 Finalist for two national Coach of the Year awards
• 2019-Present: Australian National Team (Assistant Coach)
• 2020-Present: Arkansas (Associate Head Coach)
Information from Razorback Sports Communications is included in this story.
Kjerstad with Orioles’ general manager and area scout that followed him
Baltimore general manager Mike Elias along with former Razorback Heston Kjerstad and area scout Ken Guthrie press conference Wednesday morning.
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast — Reaction to Sam Pittman, new SEC head coaches
Tye & Tommy on what Sam Pittman had to say, plus which new SEC coach will be at his school the longest/shortest
Pittman’s offensive linemen getting bigger, Boyd thinks may be best group
Well, Sam Pittman has said from the start he thought Arkansas needed more size in the offensive line and more speed.
Apparently mama’s cooking helps with the former.
“Their mamas must be pretty good at cooking,” Pittman said in a Zoom conference Tuesday afternoon. “It was quality weight. Right now I’m very pleased with the size of our offensive line. To me, bigger’s better as long as we can move, and that’s what we’re trying to get done right now.”
The fact it’s quality weight was the eye-catching part of that comment. What that could mean is the virtual training the players did with no spring practice worked about as well as it could have.
It may be awhile before anybody admits it, but it’s not that big of a reach to not be surprised to find out coaches were worried about them coming back fat and out of shape.
Pittman can’t watch the ongoing voluntary workouts or really dig into a lot of what happened (a silly rule that really makes absolutely zero sense). It doesn’t mean the coaches are struck deaf.
Running back Rakeem Boyd does get to see the offensive line and even works out with them somewhere away from the campus in their team-led workouts.
“That’s probably the most impressive group right now,” he said Tuesday afternoon.
Offensive tackle Myron Cunningham has gotten a lot of folks’ attention. Pittman said the senior was around 285 last season and now is tipping the scales at 319, he said. He needed it and NFL scouts have probably noticed.
“It’s hard to set the bull when you don’t have enough butt to set it with,” he said. “I had a nice conversation with him and I’m thinking he’s going to have a nice season. But he worked hard at gaining that weight and staying in shape.”
Listening to Boyd, Cunningham may not be the only one that changed.
“This is the best they’ve ever looked,” Boyd said. “They look in shape and they’ve communicated. We’ve got workouts and the whole group is together game-planning.”
His excitement was visible.
“As a running back when you see something like that you can’t do nothing but smile because you know what is gonna happen during the season,” he said. “Those guys are in shape.”
If that translates on the field it would be welcome news for Hog fans who have seen an offensive line decline since, well, Pittman left after the 2015 season.
“We’re in pretty good shape for where we’re at right now and at this point in time of the season,” he said. “We’ve got a much bigger football team than we had in mid to late March.”
Pittman not wasting time with speculation, just trying to win games
Sam Pittman was correct Tuesday afternoon when he said a lot of the media don’t seem to think there will (or should) be a college football season this year with the global pandemic.
“We’re in the winning business,” Pittman said on a Zoom conference call with the media. “So you’ll know we’re planning on Sept. 5.”
Which is probably going to happen unless something dramatic happens. In Arkansas, the governor on Tuesday gave the latest statewide numbers which now show a 98.7% survival rate from people who test positive from the virus.
That number is well over 99% for people under the age of 65. Yes, there are exceptions, but those are the overall percentages.
“We’re going off facts of what we know,” Pittman said. The coaches around the SEC meet every Thursday morning at 7:30 and the league office is in frequent contact with the member institutions.
The number to watch is the number of deaths which has dropped dramatically nationwide.
“We’re going on as planned,” Pittman said. “The media thinks we’re not going to have a season more than we do. We believe we’re going to play Sept. 5.”
Pittman didn’t announce any numbers. That information will come from athletics director Hunter Yurachek, not the coaches. It may be a little different in terms of how many fans are in the stadium and things like that, but everybody is planning to carry on with a full season that starts on time.
The “medical experts” in the media who were trying to figure out how coaches should be handling their teams at this time of the year are now predicting doom and gloom.
Everybody, including the computer models and national spokespeople, are turning into the equivalent of television weather people who look out the window, see a dark cloud and immediately issue an order to hunker down.
Pittman is aware of what people are saying in the media. You get the idea he is sort of chuckling over it to a certain extent.
“I learned a long time ago media’s very important,” he said Tuesday. “It can make your team or it can break your team if you pay a lot of attention to it.
“We can speculate for a month and some of us be right and a lot of us be wrong.”
As we said, Pittman isn’t in the business of speculating. He’ll leave that to the media experts.
His job is to win football games. Two people before him didn’t do that enough and they aren’t here.
“I’m just going off the facts the SEC commissioner tells us and we’re going on as planned to have a season Sept. 5,” Pittman said. “Honestly, I don’t know how you can prepare a team if you look at it any other way than that.”
Hogs’ Brown, Boyd on starting back workouts, dealing with various changes
Arkansas defensive back Montaric Brown and running back Rakeem Boyd met with the media Tuesday afternoon in a Zoom conference to talk about the voluntary workouts and getting ready for first practices.
Former Razorback Cook on ‘food challenge’ during health crisis
Grant Cook wanted to do something during the covid-19 pandemic and he came up with the food challenge as he told Tye Richardson and Tommy Craft (The Morning Rush) on ESPN Arkansas on Tuesday.
