Mike Neighbors’ tenure at Arkansas looks a lot like a Bell curve.
The Arkansas women’s basketball coach, now nearing the end of his seventh season running the program, has his work cut out for him this week. The Razorbacks are not in the current picture when it comes to the NCAA Tournament and the WNIT is questionable, too, after the Razorbacks lost to Auburn in the SEC Tournament on Thursday.
The Hogs closed their season on a five-game losing streak, not exaclty the stuff that makes for an appealing resume for an invitational tournament.
Such tenuous circumstances have been the standard for the Razorbacks in recent years. After a slow start at Arkansas – a 13th-place finish in Neighbors’ first season – the team increased its win total for those first three years, from 13 to 22 to 24. In SEC play, the total went from 3 to 6 to 10. Coming out of COVID, even, Arkansas still looked sharp, finishing 19-9 overall and 9-6 in the SEC. That season earned the Hogs a No. 4-seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Its crashed ever since. Arkansas lost to Wright State in the first round and followed the next season with a 23-point loss as a 10-seed to Utah in the first. Last year, Arkansas made the WNIT. A nice run gave hope that 2023-24 would be a turnaround.
It wasn’t. For whatever reason – and theories run the gamut from ‘sure, that makes to sense’ to ‘whatever, you’re insane’ – Neighbors has been unable to recapture whatever it was that made the Razorbacks stalwarts in the late Donald Trump era.
The Hogs don’t lack talent. Taliah Scott is the best scorer in the league and she’s just a freshman. Yes, she was out a lot down the stretch, which is part of the reason for Arkansas’ struggles, then, but the Razorbacks weren’t exactly blowing the doors off of people when she was healthy. Samara Spencer and MiKayla Daniels are established SEC starters. Saylor Poffenbarger, too.
Depth has been a big problem for the team in recent years. Arkansas’ recruiting classes have left a bit to be desired, leading to a team this year that saw only two reserves average double-digit minutes a game. Sasha Goforth’s illness certainly didn’t help Arkansas’ depth, either.
The question is how much longer the school is willing to roll with it. Arkansas is by no means a bad team. On the verge of the NCAA Tournament is a reasonable place to be a sport that is notoriously harder to crack than on the men’s side. But treading ground is only justifiable for so long.
Anything less than that? Let’s just say things are precarious, even if this particular writer thinks they shouldn’t be.
Yet.