Hogs’ Dungee named to midseason Top 25 for national Wooden Award
FAYETTEVILLE — Chelsea Dungee was named to the Wooden Award Midseason Top 25, announced Wednesday of players still in the running for college basketball’s most prestigious honor.
Dungee has led Arkansas’ potent offense with 19.7 points per game, the 19th-best mark in the NCAA. The redshirt junior guard recently scored her 1,000th point for the Razorbacks, needing just 49 career games to get there.
Dungee averaged 20.4 points per game over those 49 contests, which would be the highest scoring average in program history.
The Sapulpa, Okla., native has scored 20+ in eight of Arkansas’ 15 games so far this season, and dropped her seventh 30-piece for the Hogs earlier this season against Kansas State.
She continues to use her ability to get to the line to generate points, as Dungee is currently fourth in the NCAA in free throws made and sixth in attempts.
Additionally, Dungee’s 19.5 points per game in SEC only games is tied for the sixth-best average in the conference.
???? Halftime Pod — Coaching carousel, new recruits/commits, Nikki Chavanelle and more!
Phil & Tye on the coaching carousel in CFB, potential new recruits, Nikki joins the show, plus a little The Bachelor talk at the end!
Kjerstad, Martin named to preseason All-American team
FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas’ Heston Kjerstad and Casey Martin have been named first team preseason All-Americans by Perfect Game.
Arkansas is the only program with two position players to garner first team status.
The Perfect Game nod is the second preseason accolade for the duo, as Kjerstad and Martin were recognized by Collegiate Baseball on the outlet’s first & second teams, respectively.
A junior from Amarillo, Texas, Kjerstad put together a .327 batting average last year over 65 starts, leading the team in hits (87) and home runs (17). It was the second consecutive season he’s tallied 87 knocks, as he drove in 51 RBIs and scored 53 runs in 2019.
Martin, a junior from Lonoke, Arkansas, finished his sophomore season with a .286/.548/.364 line at the plate, starting all 66 games.
He tallied 81 hits, 40 for extra bases with 21 doubles, four triples and 15 homers. Martin also recorded 57 RBIs and scored 67 runs, both figures ranking second on the squad last season.
Before the calendar turned to 2020, the Razorbacks picked up a No. 9 preseason ranking from Collegiate Baseball Newspaper, the first poll revealed for the upcoming season.
It marks the second time in three years the Razorbacks have received a top-10 ranking from the outlet, beginning the 2018 season in third. Last year, Collegiate Baseball put Arkansas at No. 25 in its first poll.
The Razorbacks are coming off a 46-20 season that produced an SEC West division title and the program’s 10th trip to the College World Series in 2019.
Coach Dave Van Horn, entering his 18th season at the helm of the baseball team, has more appearances in the CWS than any active coach in the nation with eight.
The 2020 slate kicks off with Eastern Illinois for the second-straight season, beginning on Friday, Feb. 14, at 3 p.m. at Baum-Walker Stadium.
Musselman on ‘unique’ relationship with Jones, recapping time in Baton Rouge
Hogs coach Eric Musselman talked Tuesday about Mason Jones plus his year at LSU as an assistant coach before the team left for the game Wednesday night.
Jones on really liking relationship with Musselman after coaching change
Arkansas’ Mason Jones talked with the media Tuesday afternoon before the team left for Baton Rouge about how he’s handled the change from Mike Anderson to Eric Musselman.
Pittman finishes staff with naming three assistant coaches Monday
FAYETTEVILLE — New Arkansas coach Sam Pittman has completed his on-field coaching staff with the hire of four new assistants — Jon Cooper, Scott Fountain, Derrick LeBlanc and Jimmy Smith.
There had been unconfirmed reports of all four coaches at various media outlets for the past few days.
Cooper will coach tight ends for the Razorbacks after serving in the same capacity at Central Florida for the last two years.
The Knights’ 2019 offense finished the regular season in the top 10 nationally in total offense (4th, 536.6 ypg), scoring (6th, 43.0 ppg) and passing yards (8th, 320.0 ypg).
The Knights’ total offense set a school record and marked the second straight year under head coach Josh Heupel the UCF offense gained more than 500 yards per game.
Prior to UCF, Cooper spent two seasons as an offensive analyst for then-offensive coordinator Josh Heupel at Missouri.
The Tigers’ offense exploded to lead the Southeastern Conference in yards per game in 2017 (502.2 ypg) and points per game (37.5 ppg), while ranking second in passing yards (308.6 ypg).
Cooper began his coaching career at his alma mater, Oklahoma, as a graduate assistant coach. He spent two seasons with the Sooners while the program went 19-7, including a 45-31 victory over Alabama in the 2014 Sugar Bowl.
Cooper spent four seasons in the NFL, playing 13 games during his first three seasons with the Minnesota Vikings and made his first career start against the Dallas Cowboys at center. He originally joined the Vikings in 2009 as an undrafted free agent out of Oklahoma before signing with the Tennessee Titans in 2012.
Fountain comes to Arkansas as the special teams coach after spending 2019 at Georgia in the same role. The Bulldogs saw immediate success with Fountain at the controls, led by kicker and Lou Groza Award winner Rodrigo Blankenship.
The first-team All-SEC kicker capped an impressive career at UGA going 27-for-33 (81.8%) on field goals and making all 46 extra points as the Bulldogs won the 2020 Allstate Sugar Bowl.
Blankenship was also a weapon on kickoffs allowing just 14 returns all season. Punter Jake Camarda improved in 2019 as well, upping his average to 46.8 yards per punt to rank sixth nationally.
Before joining Georgia’s staff, Fountain had spent the previous eight years as a member of the football program at Auburn, the first four as the Tigers’ player personnel director and the latter four coaching tight ends and special teams.
From 2014-16, Fountain coached kicker Daniel Carlson, a three-time Lou Groza Award finalist.
Fountain, a part of three SEC championship teams, led Auburn’s administrative and recruiting efforts from 2009-12. He followed Gene Chizik to Auburn after spending two seasons (2007-08) on Chizik’s staff at Iowa State as tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator.
Fountain has coached in four national championship games (1997, 2010, 2013, 2017) since beginning his collegiate coaching career at Florida State (1994-96) as an offensive graduate assistant.
He then spent seven seasons as an offensive line coach and recruiting coordinator at Central Florida. Before his eight-year stint at Auburn, Fountain also included coaching stops at Middle Tennessee State (2004-05), Georgia Southern (2006) and Iowa State (2007-08).
He began his coaching career in high school, making four stops in Alabama, including Flomaton HS (1988) and W.S. Neal HS (1989), his alma mater.
He became a head coach for the first time at Frisco City (1990-92) and made his final high school stop at Monroe County (1993).
LeBlanc (pronounced “luh-blon” the “c” is silent) brings SEC experience from LSU and Kentucky and ties to the state of Arkansas having coached at Henderson State (2001-04) and Arkansas Tech (2005).
He will coach the defensive line at Arkansas.
At Kentucky over the last three seasons, he helped build the Wildcats into a solid program going to three straight bowl games, including a win over Penn State in the 2019 VRBO Citrus Bowl to cap a 10-win campaign.
Kentucky went 25-14 overall in his three seasons in the Bluegrass State.
His 2019 defensive line led the way for the Wildcats into opposing backfields, contributing 18 of Kentucky’s 33 sacks that ranked fourth in the SEC. Senior Calvin Taylor Jr. paced the Cats with 8.5 to finish second in the league.
LeBlanc’s line also added 37 tackles for loss with Taylor Jr. and Josh Paschal each totaling 9.5 – second-most on the team. The group also forced eight fumbles.
He began his coaching career in 1997 at Breaux Bridge High School in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, where he was the offensive and defensive line coach for three seasons from 1997-99.
LeBlanc broke into the college ranks in 2000 when he accepted a graduate assistant position at LSU. There he assisted then-defensive line coach Pete Jenkins in coaching the defensive line, as well as assisting the strength and conditioning staff.
LeBlanc, a native of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, was a four-year football letterman at Northwestern State University (1992-96).
He played both defensive and offensive line during his playing career and earned Southland Conference All-Academic honors as both a junior and senior.
He graduated from Northwestern State with a degree in business administration and earned a master’s degree in sports administration from LSU.
He and his wife, Niema, have two sons, Dayton and Derrick, and one daughter, Kennedy.
Smith will coach the Hogs’ running backs after spending last season as the running backs coach at Georgia State.
The Panthers featured one of the best running attacks in the Sun Belt led by first-team All-Sun Belt running back Tra Barnett, who led the league and ranked 11th nationally with 111.8 yards per game.
Barnett and the Panthers ranked 13th nationally with 241.6 yards per game on the ground as a team.
Smith was a part of Georgia State’s historic upset at Tennessee when the Panthers outrushed the Volunteers 213-93 to win 38-30 on opening weekend in the Panthers’ first-ever win over a Power 5 program.
Prior to jumping to college football, Smith coached for 12 years at Cedar Grove High School in Metro Atlanta, including his last six years as athletic director, head football coach and head track coach.
In his six seasons at the helm of the football program, he led the Saints to a 67-14-1 record.
From 2015-18, Smith led Cedar Grove to two Class AAA state championships in 2016 and 2018 — the first two state titles in school history — as well as berths in the state final four in 2015 and 2017, all while winning 51 games.
He earned numerous coaching accolades, including a pair of Georgia Coach of the Year awards in Class AAA (2016 and 2018) as well as multiple region and county Coach of the Year honors.
Smith was a quarterback at Tennessee State, helping the Tigers to back-to-back Ohio Valley Conference championships in 1998 and 1999.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Fayetteville State in 2002 and added a master’s of education from Georgia State in 2009.
Smith, a native of Darlington, S.C., and his wife Quanisha have a son, Jermaine II, and a daughter, Joss.
Pittman’s on-field coaching staff is now complete with the four joining defensive coordinator Barry Odom, offensive coordinator Kendal Briles, offensive line coach Brad Davis, wide receivers coach Justin Stepp, linebackers coach Rion Rhoades and cornerbacks coach Sam Carter.
???? Halftime Pod — Hogs beat A&M, new assistant coaches, plus Kevin McPherson
Phil & Tye on the win over Texas A&M, the new football assistant coaches, plus Kevin McPherson!
Musselman showing little interest in waiting to develop winning habit
Maybe the biggest thing in basketball that can’t be taught is height and Eric Mussleman showed Saturday night that Arkansas can figure out ways around it.
He played five guards at times in the 69-59 win over the Texas Aggies before a raucous sold-out crowd at Bud Walton.
“It was a little risky,” he said later.
He knew that coming in. In life, height is a product of either genetics or luck. For college basketball teams you either recruit it or figure out ways around it which was — more or less — what Musselman did against A&M.
“They’re comfortable, no matter who the five are,” Aggies coach Buzz Williams said later. “They’re interchangeable.”
The Razorbacks saw a 42-33 halftime lead disappear fairly quickly in the second half, primarily because the odds would have been long they could hit water falling out of a boat in the middle of a lake.
“What I didn’t think would happen is that we would struggle to score,” Musselman said in the postgame.
The Hogs were 2-of-6 from the field, 1-of-2 at the free-throw line and found themselves clinging to a 50-48 lead with 13:11 to play in the game.
About a minute later Musselman brought in Jalen Harris for the only player that gets into games with some height, Adrio Bailey, and the offense found some life. Arkansas shot nearly 50 percent (7-of-13) from the field.
The Hogs, behind Mason Jones and Isaiah Joe, opened a 66-56 lead with 3:52 left, but A&M got a final score from Andre Gordon with 3:36 to play and Musselman basically took the air out of things on offense.
“That small group was really good at getting stops when we really needed it,” he said. “There was a little bit of clock management, we were playing a little bit of a gamble running the clock down, but we thought it was the best way to handle the last four and-a-half minutes of the game.”
What doesn’t get the attention is how well this team plays defense, mostly just scrambling and disrupting things for the other team on offense.
“If you study their defensive numbers, they’re through the roof,” Williams said.
Desi Sills got his attention. Not with his quiet 13 points, four rebounds and two steals, but the disruption he caused in the Aggies’ offense.
“[Sills] is very, very pesky,” Williams said. “Really, really good on-the-ball defender.”
He was just part of the problem for A&M.
“The pressure is contested on every dribble, contested on every pass,” he said. “They own the elbow. That’s probably one of their defensive principles. They make it every hard to get it to the elbow.”
The Hogs committed just nine turnovers in the game, compared to the Aggies’ 17.
“That was a cushion we just couldn’t overcome,” Williams said.
On top of all that, the crowd of 19,200 was a factor in the game, too.
“We handled an incredible college basketball environment in many respects about as well as we could,” Williams said.
Musselman, playing like a chessmaster at times with some calculated gambles, got his first taste of how loud it can get.
“The crowd’s energy was insanely awesome,” he said later. “Had a buddy in from the Bay Area who said he’s never seen an arena as loud as that in his life.”
He might want to get used to it.
While the odds are every gamble he takes won’t work out as well as Saturday night, he’s shown through this team getting to a 12-1 record nobody predicted he’s moved the chess pieces around the board a couple of times before.
Let’s face it, did you think they would be here? Most people were willing to give Musselman a pass and just wanted to see a direction headed up and some fairly decent recruiting.
It’s apparent he wasn’t waiting around on anything … particularly wins.
