UK Wildcat Country

Doing a “hate” column on Arkansas is tough. I respect the Arkansas program more than any other team in the SEC. I loved the games in the 90s. The games at Fayetteville were so big that CBS would put them on Super Bowl Sunday, and they’d be a bigger game than the Super Bowl because the Vikings suck so much. The 1995 SECT final is the best SEC basketball game of my lifetime. I loved Big Nasty and Scotty Thurman making big plays. I loved Clint McDaniel jumping into passing lanes. I loved Alex “By God” Dillard and Dwight Stewart launching bombs. However, I feel that a column like this is necessary and good luck because I’ve done three of them and the good guys have won the games that followed. So I apologize to the great Arkansas fans in advance.

PAT BRADLEY

The man who inspired me to come up with the Pat Bradley Effect for college basketball players, this guy makes the list because of that motivation. Pat Bradley played at Arkansas for four decades. He began his career with Eddie Sutton and finished with Stan Heath. He was also good for multiple bombs every time Kentucky was in town. Every player who played four years and made it seem like forty is an example of the Pat Bradley effect, and while others came before him, nobody made it stick like Pat.

COREY BECK

I’m pretty sure I heard that Beck was sick, so I wish him well. This is restricted to how he was on the court, which was a pest. I couldn’t stand Beck for the same reasons that non-UK fans would hate Cliff Hawkins and non-New York fans would hate John Starks. He just played tough, physical defense for 40 minutes and annoyed the crap out of whoever had the ball. The reason why McDaniel had so many steals for the Razorbacks was because Beck hounded guys into forcing terrible passes.

STEVEN HILL

My favorite play in college basketball is a good block. Nobody was better at it for a couple years than Hill. Announcers neglected to mention that it was the only thing he did well. Also, he is the closest modern day equivalent of Samson from the Old Testament. When he had that ungodly ponytail, he led the conference in blocks by a wide margin and had a particularly awesome offensive game against Glen Davis and LSU. When he cut it off, he was terrible. He also had a really good offensive game against Randolph Morris the last time the Cats went to Bud Walton. I’m glad he’s gone, as limited as he was.

ERIC FERGUSON

Here’s a low-end UK Killer. Most of the guys from the UK Killer list also killed most of the other opponents they played – not Ferguson. I never saw Arkansas have a game on TV where Ferguson shot lights out unless Kentucky was the other team on the court. Fortunately, he had Stan Heath as a coach, which meant that bad coaching offset good shooting.

BRANDON DEAN & TEDDY GIPSON

As far as I’m concerned, these guys are the same person. Both guys are prime examples of the Pat Bradley Effect, and when Joe Johnson wasn’t doing his thing in the early 2000s, these guys did it. Obviously Johnson is enjoying tremendous success right now with the Hawks, but as Razorbacks, Dean and Gipson were every bit as dangerous as he was.

Honorable mention goes to Matt Jones. He didn’t get much clock as a basketball player, but as a quarterback, he was tougher to wrap up than a greased pig, no pun intended. He enjoys the nose candy now, but I’ll say this much: I wish Casey Dick had been the QB during that 7-OT game.