Shock Result Find Out Who Won the Arkansas Basketball Game Today

The defining sequence of Arkansas' 1994 national championship run came in the final game of its season, fittingly, with 1:00 left on the clock against Duke.

Clint McDaniel passed to Corey Beck, who took two dribbles to the right baseline; star forward Corliss Williamson was too close, so Beck flipped a pass back to Dwight Stewart, a 6-9 center with a smooth touch; he bobbled Beck's pass, but gathered control of the ball and flipped it to Scotty Thurman in the wing; Thurman splashed a rainbow 3 with just a second remaining on the shot clock and 50.7 seconds left in the game.

With that shot, Thurman broke a 70-70 tie, spurring the Razorbacks to a 76-72 victory and their first national championship. In a little less than 10 seconds, 40 Minutes of Hell became immortalized in NCAA Tournament lore.

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Dwight Stewart made the most unselfish play in our program's history, Thurman told Sporting News. I get the accolades and the recognition of making the shot, but had he not bobbled the ball he probably would have taken it. He probably would have made it, too.

That unselfish answer explains how the 1993-94 Arkansas team became the most fun Southeastern Conference men's basketball champion of all time — even if it didn't always feel that way for the Razorbacks at that time.

Kentucky has eight national championship teams. Florida cut down the nets in 2006 and '07. Arkansas is the only other men's basketball team in the conference that can claim a title, won with a furious full-court style of play that had a seal of approval from President Bill Clinton, yet still sought validation for its coach from critics who couldn't look past the billowing shorts that stretched past his players' knees.

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Coach Nolan Richardson, his unselfish cast of players — and yes, Clinton — made that unique story possible in the 1993-94 season. It all culminated when Stewart bobbled the pass and dished to Thurman.

The fact that he had the wherewithal to not force a shot and pass the ball showed all the things Coach Richardson had been preaching to us all along, Thurman said. That's to give up yourself and put the team first.

That's the word Richardson used to describe what he tried to instill in his players as a first-time head coach at Bowie High School in El Paso, Texas in 1968.

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Richardson played for coach Don Haskins at Texas Western (now UTEP), graduating two years before the Miners won the national championship in 1966 with an all-black starting lineup. Richardson had a roster comprised of mostly Hispanic players and watched too many low-scoring losses rooted in conventional coaching.

We couldn't win because all my kids were so small and short, Richardson told SN. In order for us to have a chance to win, we had to figure out a way to get cheap baskets. When you play with 'rabia, ' it means like a rabid dog. Everyone is going to run away from us. We must run to them. They will run from us.

We had no starters in practice, he said. We intermingled every single day with different players, different combinations, I never wanted my five to hardly ever play together.

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Richardson won with that style at Bowie (1968-78) and Western Texas Junior College (1978-80), then took Tulsa to three NCAA Tournament appearances from 1980-85.

Richardson was among the first black head coaches in the Deep South,  but he took that scrutiny head-on. He told it how he saw it and didn't apologize. Longtime Arkansas play-by-play announcer Mike Nail remembers the first time he observed Richardson on the court at Barnhill Arena. That's when Nail knew this would work.

He sweated as much as the players did, Nail said. He was on the court at every practice and very demanding. He didn't baby his players. They were tough. He was tough.

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Arkansas finished 12-16 in Richardson's first year — a season in which his daughter Yvonne battled leukemia before passing away in 1987. There were major hurdles, but Richardson found success that led to a Final Four appearance in 1990. That's when rabia morphed into something entirely different on both sides of the ball.

The '40 Minutes of Hell' had turned into a defense and an offense, Richardson said. It didn't matter where we played you, we were going to get after it. Full court, half court, three-quarter court, it doesn't really matter. We were going to attack you on both ends. We weren't just a defensive team. We were an offensive team that was going to be score points.

Todd Day, Oliver Miller and Lee Mayberry were the key pieces who led Arkansas to that Final Four appearance in 1990, a trip to Denver that ended with a 97-83 loss to Duke. The next year, that group closed the final season in the Southwest Conference with an Elite Eight appearance.

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When Coach Richardson came in, I was starting to flourish as a young kid in basketball, Williamson told SN. His style of play kind of fit with how the grassroots AAU teams were playing in Arkansas.

Williamson graduated from Russellville High School (Russellville, Ark.) on a Saturday and was on Arkansas' campus the next day. Thurman arrived nine days later. The sophomore trio of Beck, McDaniel and Stewart were trying to prove themselves on that 1992-93 team.

Some of it wasn't always pretty, Thurman said. There would be arguments. There would be confrontations. They were challenging us, sometimes getting the better of us. We had a chance to go through some adverse situations where it wasn't about a win or loss. It was about pride.

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When we got on the floor we knew — we knew — we could push anybody to the point of no return, Richardson said, before doubling down on that phrase with emphasis. The point of no return. That's what our team was about. Not just press and push you. We're going to attack boards. We're going to have deflections. When you go out and play for me you better be angry because when I walk in the gym, I am angry.

That 40 Minutes of Hell philosophy built up in practice, one minute at a time. Richardson mixed up the first, second and third teams. Beck remembers the five- and 10-minute segments most.

It was five minutes and it was fun, Beck said. No fouls unless it was egregious on the court. Nonstop press, score, turn around and pick up full court. Sometimes press. Sometimes man-to-man. Always help-side defense. It went from five to 10 minutes straight. No subs. That's tough.

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It was about being tough and playing through fouls and other things that might happen in a game, Williamson said. Coach Richardson always said the practices are going to be harder than the games. Games should be fun. Practices are going to be hard.

If you run 40 minutes of basketball and it's pressure, pressure, pressure, most teams that are playing seven or eight guys, Beck said. By the middle of the second half you're going to get winded. Things change.

The way we saw it is the other team had to pay for that, Thurman added. It would be funny. Guys would be at the free throw line after just a couple trips, and they're huffing and puffing. We'd look around like, 'These guys are tired?'

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The Razorbacks finished 22-9 and reached the Sweet 16 in 1992-93 before losing 80-74 to eventual national champion North Carolina. Arkansas was good, but hardly considered among the nation's elite.

We got beat on the boards so bad against Carolina, and we felt like we just needed a few other big guys, Thurman said. We would always be on Coach, 'We need some bigger guys! We need some bigger guys!' He went out and got Darnell Robinson and Lee Wilson. For us, that was the ultimate sign of confidence.

Robinson, 6-11, provided that size at center. Williams, Beck, Thurman and Stewart were part of a solid core that also included guard McDaniel, Roger Crawford and 3-point specialist Alex Dillard, whose range was so far that Richardson used to simply say, All we have to do is get him in the gym.

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Wilson, Davor Rimac, Ray Biggers and Elmer Martin combined to keep more than 1, 000 minutes off the bench. Ken Biley, John Engskov and Reggie Merritt were ready at any time. This was a 15-deep team with a simple philosophy.

Give me one minute, give me two minutes, three minutes, Richardson said. I don't care how many minutes you can give me but give me those minutes as hard as you can.

You can talk about how we shared the ball, but we shared our minutes well, too, Williamson said. You look at how the minutes were dispersed, no one played a high level of minutes with the way we played. It could have been a situation where we could have had players want more minutes, more touches. We understood what it took to win.

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Arkansas set the SEC record for points that year and averaged 93.4 points per game (for reference,

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