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I just wondered if anyone else noticed that this ex-Mustang was now starting at forward for Arkansas? I was watching the news Saturday, and after the lowlights of the SMU/OSU debacle they showed some clips from the Hogs blowout of North Texas, and there was Billy. You could have knocked me over with a feather, I thought the guy had simply dropped off the college basketball map, or wound up at a D2 school. Oh well, its a crazy world.

Not a bad walk on for Arkansas. I wonder how he improved so much, in a year of not playing, to be able to start for an SEC team, when he couldn't get off the bench here. Hmmmmm. Either puts the red-shirt theory to good test or the lack of coaching theory. Truth most likely is a little of each.

or Arkansas isn't very good. I think they have a couple of bad losses and they got pummeled by Ok State in Fayetteville. Pharis would be a perfect walk on type player though.

Arkansas is 8-3, they lost to OSU 58-73 and their other losses are to a top-20 team (illinois) and to Western Carolina. I guess you could call the Carolina loss comparable to losing to Appalachian state, since they are in the same conference, but WCU has a much better record. They beat La. Tech and Tulsa without much trouble, though, and blew UNT out of the gym. I looked all this stuff up yesterday after I saw the guy on TV. The Hogs are about 25 places ahead of SMU in the Sagarin rankings.
Pharis has apparently started every game. He's their best 3 point shooter (42%) and 4th on the team in most of the other categories like points and rebounds and minutes played. He's certainly not a star by anyones measure, but thats a pretty impressive stat line for a walk on.

I have to ask, if losing to a team by 15 is a stomping, what do we call it when SMU loses to the same team by 35? Would that be a mutilation?

Boy Morty, you've made my point better than I ever could. Arkansas might be a bit better than SMU, but not much based on performance so far. What wins do they have comparable to at Purdue and Texas Tech? Surely not La Tech. They started calling for Stan Heath's head in the hills yet? By the way, I never said SMU should be considered a good team at this point. The point is this aint the 1995 40 Minutes of Hell Hogs we're talking about. Its a team that lost to Western Carolina. I can tell you that Illinois has some serious weaknesses too.

Do not worry about Arkansas. Nolan left them bare and that was understood when Heath came in. He is doing a great job of recruiting and you will see them back in the top 10 in a couple of years, if not next year. The best thing for Heath is that the fans for the most part are intelligent enough to know what a rebuilding process is and that Heath is building for the future, not just one season. Without any recruiting restrictions and with knowledgable expectations, Arkansas will be just fine. Be very glad they are not on our schedule this year or any time in then future as far as I know.

P.S. I do not know what Dement did to our guys after the App. St loss, but be assured that the Arkansas players have been "inspired" never to let a loss like that happen again. They were inspired into the wee hours of the morning.

Yea, Arkansas will be back, but in the context of Billy Pharis, its not all that impressive that he is starting for this years team. Its a credit to him that he stuck with it. As for being glad SMU doesn't play Arkansas, you might be but I'm not. Would love to catch them in Moody right now or anytime. Would be a legit chance at a big win this year and no disgrace to lose to them when they are back on top.

Hoop Fan:

My expertise on basketball goes about as far as you could throw me, and trust me that is not far. But...I truly believe that Arkansas has superior athletes to us on the court right now. We might beat them in experience, but the Brewer kid will match up with Bhop and now they have just added Matt Jones and he is quite an addition. They havw a very athletic, young crop of kids. Of course there is the old "any given night" but I do not think we could stay on the floor with Arkansas. That said, I too would truly like to play them in Dallas or Fayettville, because I think games like that help us to improve.

Now remember that all of these remarks are based on my knowledge of Arkansas athletics, coupled with a football background. That makes all of my basketball theories just that.

Billy would've been a good player for us if he had gotten the playing time that he deserved. He was one of the best shooters on the team. Remember, he hit the game-tying three at Baylor to send the game into OT. From everything I heard, he was one of the best players in practice, yet Dement hardly looked his way during games. That's why he transferred.

Whether Arkansas is down this year or not, he's still starting for a SEC team. Too bad he never got that opportunity here.

Mrydel,

Yeah, you are righ, you don't know anything about basketball.

Heath has a good class coming in next year though.

DBB

Arkansas' current freshman class was a top 10 class and has two guys that were higher ranked than B-Hop was. Their class for next year is considered the top 2 or 3 class in the nation. It's nor fair to even compare our talent to theirs, but we could probably give them a game right now.

<small>[ 01-06-2004, 01:46 PM: Message edited by: Mike Damone ]</small>

I TiVo the Arkansas/LSU game and watched it when I got home. Wow, what is up with Pharis? He was Arkansas best player.....21 pts (8-13 from the field), 11 boards and he always had his hands on the ball. Its hard to imagine that he couldnt get minutes with us. Believe me, we could use the Billy Pharis that I saw last night.

Did he not get along with Dement or was Dement just overlooking him????

I'll take your word for it LA. Those are some good stats for sure. He always seemed too stiff and upright to me, but he definitely would have made a good 6th man on this SMU team.

HF, that's the same way I remembered him. As you would expect with in the SEC there were athletes all over the floor in that game but Pharis used his body and a nice little outside shot to be Arkansas most productive player. He had 5 3s on 8 attempts. I looked at his stats, he is shooting 46% (19 of 41) from the 3 point line for the season. Not bad at all.

I watched a fair amount of that game. Billy was not the most athletic player on the court by any means, but he didn't make mistakes. He cushioned quicker guys on D, blocked out, got great offensive position and took shots when he had them, not when he felt like shooting them. If he were still on our team and playing like that, he would not only play for us, he would be our best player. I ask again, is his improvement a result of being a year older or better coaching? An extra year makes a huge difference to a 20 year olds developement, and since we can't or don't get JUCO's perhaps a rigorus red shirt program would be a plus for our program. Problem with that is no one wants to come in and sit for a year on a team that isn't that good to begin with. A nice Catch 22. Congrats to Billy!