Weren’t Alvin Robertson, Darryl Walker, Joe Klein
Corey Beck and Dwight Stewart all transfers?
It’s not like coaches who want to win don’t consider it and perhaps now with NCAA rules more than ever.
Texas Tech almost won the national title last year with a few if I’m not mistaken.
Kleine is the only one on that list who transferred from a four-year school. The other ones were all JUCO. Jerry Tarkanian was killing people at UNLV with JUCO kids including Larry Johnson.
Point being. Some of our greatest teams did not rely on freshmen four or five year guys to win.
They found guys who were not freshmen out of high school.
As I recall, Sutton placed Robertson at Crowder College and Brewer at Westark, which was in his hometown. Neither one was academically eligible to play as a freshman anyway, and you could go to JUCO for one year and then transfer even if you were a nonqualifier (now you have to be in JC for two years and graduate if you didn’t qualify). He told them, go there for a year and I’ll sign you next year, and he did. Almost like a redshirt year, except they were player and did use up their freshman season of eligibility.
Darrell Walker at Westark as well
Swine, I wonder if we are saying variances of the same thing.
I was suggesting that other hog coaches used transfers to their benefit.
Some transfers won a national title and some went on to become all Americans and olympians.
But they transferred from somewhere and did not come directly to Arkansas out of high school.
Seems it’s a newer phenomena with this grad transfer thing and all that maybe we are working hard to do to get out of our hole like others of
late or maybe we are taking it to a new national level.
But improving one’s roster with kids from a community college or a jc is something Arkansas has a history of doing as well it seems.
However we do it the right way within the law, I’m hopeful that we cede no territory to other programs playing within the law as well.
And hopeful as we all are for a return to more consistent NCAAs and national prominence we all believe our program deserves.
Hopeful and crossing fingers for this new leadership.
I’m saying that the dynamic in the 70s and early 80s was different than it is now. Joe Kleine got tired of Digger Phelps at Notre Dame, even though the Irish were pretty good and Joe helped them upset #1 UVa while he was there. Carey Kelly, who was a useful reserve forward for us in the early 80s, left Moo U and came to UA because they sucked and he wanted to play on a better team in a better league (SEC was Kentucky and the Nine Dwarfs at that point). You could place kids like Alvin and Boot in JC and be pretty sure they’d sign with you in a year, and they didn’t have to wait two years like they do now.
There were transfers, but certainly not the churn of people transferring then like there is now though. Mike Watley from Fort Worth quit our 1978 team and transferred right before the NCAA tournament; that impulsive move cost him a Final Four ring. I’m not sure he ever played again either.
Carey Kelly story: When we played Tulane in the Hall of Fame Bowl in 1980, I drove to Birmingham though Starkville and detoured onto the Moo U campus. Ventured into the Hump and Moo U was getting ready for basketball practice; a couple of players noticed me. Told them I was an Arkansas student checking out the campus and they asked if I knew Kelly, who had transferred the preceding year. I said that I did. They asked me to tell him hello. That Moo U team went 8-21 and got the coach fired, although they had Jeff Malone who went on to a pretty good NBA career.
Mississippi St. has really came a long ways athletically since the early 1980’s. Their football stadium then had a capacity of about 30,000. The seats along the sidelines didn’t even quite reach the goal line, they had concession stands even with the end zones. They would show up on what few games they had on TV. Most of their big games were at Jackson, as was the case with Ole Miss. As was the case with the Razorbacks, our on campus stadium was a cozy 40,000 in those days.
I know they don’t really count (non Power 5), but has anyone seen the UMKC roster turnover? They lost 9 player to the transfer portal!
http://www.verbalcommits.com/transfers/2019 - click on the “previous school” tab to arrange the players by the school they left and scroll down
There are quite a few teams with more turnover than us.
Another fun one is to click on the “Ht” tab to arrange from tallest to shortest! 