Hog Calls : Too much success too soon sets bar too high
Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008
John Pelphrey could have had a better coaching first year, but hardly a more perfect one.
Perfect that is, for a first-year coach aiming to stay awhile.
Long term, faring too well that first year can doom a coach as faring too poorly.
Any season less than undefeated is unintentional of course. Every coach would win them all if they could.
In fact, Arkansas basketball coach Pelphrey spent part of his first postseason press conference lamenting that the Razorbacks didn’t win the SEC West as predicted by many preseason prognosticators.
But winning too many too soon can set the bar so high you’ll eventually get barred for failing to clear it again.
Just look at Kentucky from whence Pelphrey came as both a native and University of Kentucky player.
At Kentucky, Tubby Smith was hired to replace Rick Pitino, Pelphrey’s old coach, when now Louisville coach Pitino moved on to a lucrative but unhappy coaching / general manager NBA stint with the Boston Celtics.
Smith won the national championship his maiden Kentucky season.
The Commonwealth loved him — until he never won another national title.
Kentuckians recall of Smith’s marvelous first year started getting prefaced with “ He did it with Pitino’s players. ”
Last year Tubby bolted to Minnesota barely one step ahead of the posse.
Just like former Arkansas football coach Houston Nutt last December in his hasty exit to Ole Miss.
Back in 1998, Nutt took over from Danny Ford a Razorback program that had successive 4-7 ’s for ‘ 96 and ‘ 97.
Nutt went 9-3 with a SEC West co-championship and the state raved.
Much of the state raved at him, not with him, by the end. Memories of that 1998 glory got increasingly prefaced with “ Yeah, he did it with Danny Ford’s players. ”
Ironic since many infatuated with Nutt in ‘ 98 tended not to give Ford deserved credit for whipping into shape the program at low character and physical ebb before he assumed command in 1993.
Longtime Razorback football fans remember Lou Holtz debuting 11-1 in 1977 and upsetting Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. At Arkansas, he never won that many again. Holtz was fired in 1983.
Nobody rose faster or fell harder than former Auburn football coach Terry Bowden.
Bowden went, 11-0, his first Auburn season. Five years later he was run off with five games to play. He hasn’t coached again.
So even as Pelphrey asserted, “ We would have liked to have competed better in the West, ” maybe this 23-12 overall, 9-7 SEC season is all for Pelphrey’s best.
Actually, it’s only a couple games better than predecessor Stan Heath’s 21-14, 7-9 final season.
In perception, though, those two games are two giant leaps. Beating Indiana for the program’s first NCAA Tournament game victory and first 23-win season since the century’s turn, and the Hogs’ SEC Tournament upsets of Vanderbilt and especially SEC champion Tennessee and home dominance at Walton Arena get applause drowning out losing to Georgia in the SEC Tournament championship game and the 31-point rout administered by No. 1 North Carolina in Round Two of the NCAA Tournament.
The season and perception of Pelphrey are starting to recreate the Arkansas aura Pelphrey first experienced as an Arkansas opponent playing for Kentucky and then assistant coaching at Florida.
It mirrors the statewide live and die by its basketball program fever he grew up with in Kentucky. It’s why he understands this job and this state like few new coaches do.
He’s a passionate coach at a passionate place. At least until the novelty wears off, that gets appreciated passionately.
“ I feel I had a very good frame of reference for Arkansas, ” Pelphrey said. “ Thought there were things here that are important that I found important. Just from being the head coach, being in the SEC, competing against this schedule, I felt comfortable with all that. ”
Yet even knowing what he knew, Pelphrey said the treatment afforded him throughout the ups and downs of the season proved he didn’t know it all.
“ I think as well as I thought I understood the situation, ” Pelphrey said, “ I was even more blown away by the people in the state. Just the encouragement, the support of this basketball team, the love for the Razorbacks. I love being the Razorbacks coach, very humbled and honored by that. ” John Pelphrey is saying and doing the things that a coach says and does intending to stay long term. His first down payment bodes for a long lease. And in praising Stan Heath’s recruiting from Day One, he’s beaten to the punch those who some day may say, “ Yeah, he did it with Stan Heath’s players. ”
• • • Nate Allen’s Razorback column appears Mondays in The Daily Record. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
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