When my friend John and I started this blog in August 2007, our goal was fairly simple: to educate the American public on the countless benefits of our nascent brand of herbal supplements, which, as "clinical research" has repeatedly shown, offers powerful antidotes to everything from halitosis to diverticulosis.

Well, mission accomplished. As we watch Americans from coast to coast bask in the fresh breath and healthier colons caused by our medicinal plants in pill form, we know it's time to walk away from this site.

OK - so the first part of that is a joke, but the second part is not. After nearly five years of writing about our beloved Arkansas Razorbacks, John and I are hanging up our blogging shoes. Actually, as eagle-eyed observers are aware, John pretty much retired from the site about six months ago. I've decided to now follow him out the exit door.

While my Razorback fandom has not abated, the time and energy that I can devote to managing and writing for this site certainly has. About a year ago, I began to feel the pangs of blogger burnout. I kept thinking and hoping that I would recapture my earlier mojo and once again start cranking out the posts, but despite a few bursts of renewed enthusiasm, that didn't happen. Both my heart and my head tell me that now is the time to move on.

I don't know exactly what the future holds for this site. However, current staffers KevinHog, Doc Harper, beauwilcox and dxf04 will continue to post when they can, and SB Nation has begun looking for new contributors to manage the blog and provide daily (or as-close-to-daily-as-possible) content. I'm sure that when the 2012 football season arrives this site will be running at full steam again.

Before I sign off, there are some people I'd like to thank for making this blog such a great experience (apologies if this sounds like an award acceptance speech). First off, a big thanks to John; creating and producing this site with him was more fun than even I originally imagined. Another big thanks to the four contributors listed above: I can't overstate how much I appreciate their fantastic work on this site, and I look forward to their future postings. Thanks as well to others who have posted over the years: Whit E. Knight, J. Hawg 3, The Hog Blogger, aboynamedsooie, gargohawg and CharlieHog.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how much I've appreciated the way media members such as Chris Bahn, Jim Harris, Bob Holt and T.J. Carpenter have helped the site by either participating in Q&As and podcasts or by somehow featuring our work.

Tyler Bleszinski, Peter Bean, Joel Hollingsworth and Drew Dunlevie at SB Nation also deserve a hearty "muchos gracias" for all of their support and guidance these past few years.

Finally, a huge, huge thanks to you, our readers and commenters. In our introductory post, John and I wrote that we were aiming to create a site that talked about the Hogs "in a spirit of good humor, balance and perspective." The comment threads always displayed that spirit, and your intelligent and witty remarks were a huge part of what made this site so enjoyable for us.

I don't want to make this seem like a complete farewell - I will be an avid reader of the site and plan to pipe up in the comment threads (and John and I may return once in a blue moon for podcasts or to convey Rasputin's latest predictions). Still, you'll definitely be seeing a lot less of me. Thus, I offer the words used by Garrison Keillor to close each installment of "The Writer's Alamac":

"Be well, do good work and keep in touch."

And, oh yeah, Woo Pig Sooie!

Things are a little slow on the Razorback front these days. To help pass the hours, here's a video of Razorback announcer Chuck Barrett chatting with new head coach John L. Smith.

Given the decidedly less-than-ideal timing of Jeff Long's coaching search, the hiring of John L. Smith as the interim coach of the Razorbacks is about as ideal a result as the program and its fans could have hoped for. Not that you would know it by the reaction of a sizable chunk of the online universe.

The move resulted in an almost predictable thermonuclear blast of outrage from message boarders infuriated that the Hogs somehow couldn't lure Nick Saban or Bill Belichick to Northwest Arkansas. And given Smith's mediocre record at Michigan State and his penchant for - uh - colorful antics (exhibit A, exhibit B), the hiring stirred a fair amount of mocking on Twitter (exhibit A). It also led the eternally outraged Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com to interrupt his vacation to pen this bizarrely angry column, in which he labels the move "a mystifying, insulting, embarrassing, dishonorable story" and says Long "might be the single worst judge of character I've ever seen."

All that sound and fury, though, should not obscure the fact that Long has now made the most of a bad situation. He has, essentially, done what made the most sense all along: he has promoted a staff member to the interim position, someone who knows the players and will keep the same system in place. Before taking the head coaching job at Weber State in December, Smith spent the 2009, 2010 and 2011 seasons as the Hogs' special teams and linebackers coach.

Promoting another current staffer such as Paul Haynes or Paul Petrino likely would have been an OK move, but would have had the disadvantage of asking that person to do something he's never done: be the face of a BCS program and deal with all the insane demands of such a position. The Razorbacks appear to have an excellent line-up of assistants; this hire allows them to concentrate on their responsibilities and gives the team someone with experience in the head coach spot. I could be wrong but I think Smith is going to largely stay out of the way and let his staff do their thing, which I'm more than OK with.

On a much less important note, I must admit that I'm looking forward to watching Smith. The man seems like a true character. The moments linked to above have been well chronicled, but did you that he has, according to Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel, "run with the bulls in Spain, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, skydived and trained with Marines"? Of course, his act will no doubt wear thin if the team fails to live up to expectations in 2012, but for now, I'm expecting some fun press conferences.

Four and half years ago, Yahoo! Sports columnist Pat Forde, then with ESPN.com, drew the ire of us Hog fans by famously describing newly hired Bobby Petrino as a "disingenuous drifter." Today, however, he wrote this:

In a decision fraught with peril, with many potential wrong choices, Jeff Long made the right choice Monday. It's been a tough month to be the athletic director at Arkansas, but he's handled it brilliantly.

Unlike that crazy evening in December 2007, I can't disagree with Pat Forde.

The news just broke. Check out the tweet below from Kurt Voigt, who covers the Razorbacks for The Associated Press.

John L. Smith returning to Arkansas as interim coach.

— Kurt Voigt (@Kurt_Voigt_AP) April 23, 2012

Updates to follow.

Let's assume just for a sec that Razorback athletic director Jeff Long does indeed do what he seems overwhelmingly likely to do: make a current assistant the Razorback interim football coach in 2012. Whom do you want him to pick?

Vote early, vote often - and then pipe up in the comments thread:

The last two weeks have been pretty tough on Razorback football fans, and we here at Arkansas Expats Inc. decided it was time to indulge in a little group therapy. In today's edition of the Hog Call Podcast, Expat staffers Beau Wilcox and Doc Harper join me to discuss the sorry Bobby Petrino saga and its aftermath.

We talk about the cell phone records (a little), the impending coaching search, Jeff Long's performance throughout this sordid mess and our (admittedly very early) predictions for the 2012 season. All this and a whole lot more. Many thanks to Beau and Doc for their time.

To listen right now, hit the play button on the widget below. Download the episode and subscribe to the podcast by visiting TalkShoe or iTunes.

There are few Arkansas traditions more heart-warming than combing through the records of a Razorback football coach's university-issued phone for evidence of an extramarital affair. My late grandfather used to grow positively misty-eyed as he recalled his bootlegger father gathering the family around the wood stove to pour over documents detailing Francis Schmidt's inappropriate calls to one floozy or another.

Well, folks, let us return to what makes us Arkansans: records of Bobby Petrino's university-issued cell phone have been released. And they ain't pretty. And possibly down right disturbing.

All kidding aside, it is absolutely amazing that after Houston Dale Nutt's travails, another Razorback coach would be so stupid as to use his publicly funded phone to conduct an affair. It truly boggles the mind. As my friend John Expat said, "It turns out Petrino wasn't that much smarter than Houston Dale."

I'll confess to not having paid Jeff Long a whole lot of attention until Bobby "Leader of the Pack" Petrino's motorcycle ride. To the extent that I thought about him, he registered as kind of a bland, corporate type, seemingly not too remarkable one way or another. Turns out, he's pretty damn remarkable.

I could never entirely decide how I felt about the Petrino situation, but when tonight's press conference was over, I backed Long's decision 100 percent (actually, since this is a sports blog, make it 110 percent). The athletic director responded to this situation with admirable swiftness, forthrightness and sobriety of mind, conducting two evening press conferences in six days and not putting possibly the greatest coach in Razorback football history above university policy and notions of acceptable workplace conduct.

This has been an utterly depressing week to be a Razorback fan. Most of all, I feel really bad for Petrino's family and Jessica Dorrell's fiance. I feel bad for the assistant coaches and players as well. I hope Dorrell is able to rebuild her life. As for Bobby ... well, it's hard to feel too much sympathy for a guy who treats those around him so abrasively. I don't wish him ill - and I think a lot of the criticisms from his past are overheated - but, all in all, I'm glad he's gone.

And, more than ever, I'm glad that Jeff Long is our athletic director.

Let the coaching search begin.

P.S. - I just saw Bill Parcells at the Fayetteville airport.

Per ArkansasSports360.com, Bobby Petrino's tenure as Razorback football coach has come to an end. Per this tweet from Hawgs Illustrated, Jeff Long wanted to keep Petrino but Bobby objected to the penalties that the athletic director wanted to impose; consequently, Long fired him.

Press conference in 15 minutes.

Razorback fans could definitely use some good news these days. Tonight, some arrived.

Razorback guard B.J. Young, who had been contemplating entering the NBA draft, announced a short while ago that he will return for his sophomore season. Young had a terrific freshman year for Mike Anderson's first Arkansas squad, averaging more than 15 points a game and shooting better than 50 percent from the field, a remarkable stat for a guard in this day and age.

For much of the last half of the season, Young was the Hogs' only offensive threat, and the thought of not having him around next year was not a pleasant one. Fortunately, it's not one we have to entertain any longer.

Razorback fans had a wild and wooly Thursday. By the time the evening was over, athletic director Jeff Long had placed head coach Bobby Petrino on administrative leave with pay after it was revealed that a 25-year-old university female employee was riding with Petrino when he crashed his motorcycle on Sunday. Petrino, through a university-issued press release, had initially indicated that no one else was involved in the accident. While the head coach is on leave, Long will conduct a review of the situation to determine whether Petrino will keep his job.

Before Long's announcement late Thursday night, Petrino issued another statement, this one acknowledging a "previous inappropriate relationship" with someone, presumably the employee.

We Hog fans loved to contrast the order and discipline that Petrino seemingly brought to his job with the melodrama of the Nutt years, but yesterday topped any Houston Dale-produced soap opera by a wide margin.

We don't have a lot of time to sit by the water cooler and chat this morning, but here are a few links and a poll for you.

Stay tuned.

Suggested reading:

• "Petrino Suspended Following Crash Revelations" - WholeHogSports.com (note:subscription required to view link)

• "Arkansas Places Razorback Football Coach Bobby Petrino on Administrative Leave" - ArkansasSports360.com

• "Razorbacks' Bobby Petrino Could Be in Violation of UA Handbook Policy on Sexual Harassment" - ArkansasSports360.com

• "Is This a Storm Bobby Petrino Can Survive?" - ESPN.com

• " Bobby Petrino Suspended: Marginal Arkansas Recruiting Class On The Line" - SBNation.com

At the risk of going all TMZ on you, we pass along a report that a certain twentysomething female was riding with Bobby Petrino on his motorcycle at the time of his Sunday evening wreck. According to AS360, the university issued a release after the incident saying that the wreck "involved no other individuals."

In his entertaining and humbly titled "The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy," Bill Simmons devotes a chapter to playing the what-if game. Over the course of a mere 58 pages, he ponders such questions as: What if Len Bias hadn't overdosed, what if Memphis instead of Cleveland had landed Lebron James, and what if the 1984 draft (the one where Michael Jordan, incredibly, was only the third pick) had turned out differently?

That got me to thinking about some of the what-ifs of Razorback basketball. Below are five questions that are sure to keep me up the next few nights and might provide some good conversation topics for my next court-ordered counseling session.

* What if Anfernee Hardaway had chosen Arkansas instead of Memphis State? Nolan Richardson's Razorbacks became wildly successful in large part because he was wildly successful in signing Memphis prep stars. Todd Day, Ron Huery and Corey Beck are a few of the Bluff City natives that helped make the Razorbacks Top 10 mainstays from the late 80s through the mid 90s.

But Nolan and the Razorbacks came in second to Larry Finch and the hometown Tigers in the fierce 1989 recruiting war for Hardaway, the No. 1 recruit in the country at the time and almost certainly the best Memphis prepster ever. Anfernee more than justified all of the hype: possessing a staggeringly complete game, he became a first-team All-American and, as a pro, was a four-time All-Star and two-time member of the All-NBA first team before injuries derailed his career.

Can you imagine Hardaway joining the likes of Day, Lee Mayberry, Oliver Miller, and, later, Corliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman in Razorback uniforms? Wow. If that had happened, it's not too hard to imagine another national championship banner hanging in Bud Walton.

* What if Rotnei Clarke and Glenn Bryant hadn't transferred and Marshawn Powell hadn't blown out his knee? Clarke would have provided the outside shooting this year's Hogs so desperately needed and Powell the inside scorer they so desperately needed. If nothing else, the athletic Bryant would have added some much-needed depth, but it's entirely possible the 6'7" forward would have excelled in Mike Anderson's style of play.

His track record suggests Anderson will get the basketball program back on track, but had these three guys been around this year, I think Arkansas already would have made the first NCAA appearance of the Anderson era.

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So, the NCAA Tournament has begun ... and frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. At least not much of one.

Largely because of the Razorbacks' struggles over most of the past decade, my interest in college hoops has dropped to an all-time low. I didn't even fill out an office bracket this year, and I couldn't name all four No. 1 seeds if my life depended on it (fortunately, my life depends on my ability to name all 11 Monkees studio albums, so I'm good).

Things weren't always this way, of course. Throughout the 80s and 90s, I watched as much of the NCAA as possible, and Razorback tournament wins left me exhilarated and their defeats often had me reaching for the Lexapro.

It's those losses I'd like to discuss today. Below are what I feel are the five most painful defeats the Razorbacks have suffered in the NCAA since I started following them in the 1979-80 season.

1. UCLA 89, Arkansas 78, 1995 national championship game. This is, hands down, the most heartbreaking loss I've experienced as a Razorback basketball fan. No other defeat comes close. Not only did this loss deny the Hogs back-to-back national championships, but it marked the end of a glorious era, as it was the final time we saw such Arkansas greats as Corliss Williamson, Scotty Thurman, Corey Beck and, of course, Dwight Stewart in Razorback uniforms.

After all they'd endured to get back to the championship game, I just knew the Razorbacks were going to win. Alas, a little part of me died that night, and I've hated Jim Harrick and Toby Bailey ever since.

2. Memphis State 82, Arkansas 80, 1992 NCAA second round. This game also marked the end of an era, the wildly successful Day-Miller-Mayberry one. I took this defeat extremely hard because I was going to college in Memphis at the time and had grown to really dislike the Tigers, especially after they had upset Arkansas in The Pyramid earlier that same season. Adding to the pain was the fact that the Hogs coughed this one up after playing picture-perfect basketball for the first 10 minutes or so of the game - I think Todd Day scored all of his 14 points in that time - and building a big first-half lead.

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Today marked the first day of spring practice. Below is footage of Bobby Petrino discussing, among other things, Alonzo Highsmith's injury and absence from spring drills.

For more on the start of spring camp, check out Chris Bahn's article on the Razorbacks' wide receivers and Tom Murphy's article on the same topic (note: subscription required to view Murphy's article).

Video courtesy of ArkansasRazorbacks.com.

One of the many reasons to be excited about the 2012 Razorback football season is the return of running back Knile Davis. In the clip below, Knile shares his thoughts on his rehab and spring practice with Chuck Barrett.

Video courtesy of ArkansasRazorbacks.com

With the Hogs undergoing yet another late-season flameout, it's been a bleak few weeks for Razorback basketball fans. Don't look to Aaron Ross to ease your pain.

The former Little Rock Parkview forward, who was a member of the highly touted 2011 recruiting class assembled by the man whom we must now blame for all that is wrong with the world (that would be former head coach John Pelphrey), failed to qualify academically and spent this year playing at St. John's Academy in Delafield, Wis. The hope among Hog fans far and wide was that Ross would be wearing a Razorback uniform next fall. The gifted scorer would have been a welcome addition to a team sorely lacking offensive firepower.

Unfortunately, Ross, who verbally committed to Arkansas as a ninth grader, has decided to sign with Texas Tech. We can't fault a young man for falling in love with the abundant charms of Lubbock, Texas, but this is still ... well ... it's a big fat bummer.

(hat tip to Whit E. Knight for the link)

I am officially ready for this season to end. Not much else to say right now. Box score here.

For the most part, I'd like to forget almost everything about last night's game as soon as possible. There is one notable exception, however: Brandon Mitchell's vicious dunk second-half dunk over Terrance Henry. (I'm guessing Henry's game-winning, three-point play took some of the sting out of this play however.)

The dunk is shown near the end of this 20-second clip:

Did we just lose that game? The one that we led by 15 midway through the second half? The one where everything seemed to be going our way during the last 10 minutes of the first half and the first 10 minutes of the second? Indeed, we did.

Wow - that was a massive heartbreaker of a loss, the kind of which Hog fans have seen too many times in recent years.

After holding the Rebels to just 26 points in the first half, the Razorbacks allowed Ole Miss to score 51 points after intermission. B.J. Young missed a difficult layup at the buzzer that would have tied the game and was seen leaving the court in tears.

He's not the only crying after that game. More thoughts later from Expats staffers in the days ahead. In the meantime, I need a stiff drink.

And so my countdown of my 10 favorite Razorback basketball players drags on. A mere two months after writing about No. 7, here's my post on No. 6. Let it never be said that I'm not a man of swift and decisive action. But I digress.

More than 30 years of following Hog hoops left me with no shortage of worthy candidates, and whittling down the list of potential honorees to just 10 hasn't been easy. Nevertheless, I have bravely soldiered on. One quick note: I've limited the list to players that have played for the Razorbacks since I became a fan in the 1979-80 season, when I was seven years old. That was the year after Sidney Moncrief's senior season. With that bit of context, on to No. 6 (btw, here's nos. 7, 8, 9 and 10) ...

Before a certain NCAA Tournament game in March 1992, I had never paid much attention to Darrell Hawkins. Every now and then, he would throw down a vicious tomahawk dunk or score in double digits, but for the most part, he had been an unremarkable player at Arkansas. A member of the landmark 1988 recruiting class along with Todd Day, Lee Mayberry, Oliver Miller and Lenzie Howell, he had come nowhere close to matching the contributions of those four.

But against the Memphis State Tigers (as they were known back then) in the second round of the '92 tournament, one couldn't help but notice Hawkins. That's because it almost seemed like he was the only Razorback player interested in winning the game.

With an intensity that in retrospect seems both a little frightening and a lot amusing, I desperately wanted Arkansas to win the game. At the time, I was a freshman at Rhodes College in Memphis, and I had been in The Pyramid earlier that same season when the unranked Tigers, led by Anfernee Hardaway, beat the No. 5 Razorbacks, 92-88. Witnessing firsthand the earth-shaking celebration of Tiger fans was a bitter pill to swallow, and knowing how much those fans were salivating at the chance to again knock off the Hogs, I couldn't bear the thought of Memphis State ending Arkansas' season.

In my semi-crazed state, I was perhaps more susceptible than others to being inspired by Hawkins' performance that afternoon. But even sane souls had to agree that the forward was mighty impressive.

With his more celebrated teammates turning in a stunningly uninspired effort and the Tigers on the verge of upsetting the Hogs for the second time in two months, Hawkins took matters into his own hands. Time and time again, he drove fearlessly to the basket. Time and time again, he drew a foul. And time and time again, he calmly sank the resulting free throws. When the afternoon was over, Hawkins was, amazingly, the Razorbacks' leading scorer, having scored 22 points and made 12 of his 13 free-throw attempts.

Memphis State beat Arkansas that day, 82-80, after Tiger forward David Vaughn tipped in a missed field goal with about five seconds to go. Mayberry narrowly missed a desperation three at the buzzer, and the Day-Miller-Mayberry era was suddenly and shockingly over. But Darrell Hawkins was just getting started.

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Yesterday's victory over Auburn was an exciting one, and I was anxious to gab about it with a fellow obsessive fan. I therefore cornered new staffer Beau Wilcox in the breakroom of the palatial Expats corporate offices and recorded this new podcast.

Beau and I discuss the surprising road win at great length, talk about whether this year's freshman class has met expectations and - per federal mandate - dabble in the Great Stadium Debate. We even chew the fat about the Lady Razorbacks and their fantastic win over Pat Summitt and the Lady Vols.

Many thanks to Beau for taking a break from filling out his voluminous new-hire paperwork to be a part of today's show.

To listen right now, hit the play button on the widget below. Download the episode and subscribe to the podcast by visiting TalkShoe or iTunes.

(By the way, if you haven't checked out the awesomely named "Pearls About Swine," Beau's weekly column about the Razorbacks for the Arkansas Times, I highly recommend you do so. It's great stuff, and we're lucky to have him onboard here.)

Games like today are the reason I should leave the soothsayin' up to our resident manic-depressive, alcoholic womanizer.

Not less than 48 hours after I basically declared their season over, the Razorbacks showed boatloads of grit and character this afternoon by rallying from a 17-point first-half deficit to defeat the Auburn Tigers 77-71 and notch their first road victory of the season. There were heroes galore: Rickey Scott, who led all scorers with 22 points; Mardracus Wade, who added 18 points; Brandon Mitchell, who turned in a fine all-round performance with 10 points, six rebounds and three assists (all career highs); and B.J. Young, who shook off a mostly sluggish effort to contribute some big, big baskets down the stretch.

And here's another stat to warm your heart: Arkansas shot 78 percent from the charity stripe, sinking 18 of their 23 free-throw attempts.

The dream of an NIT bid ain't dead yet. Go Hogs!

Enough from me - what are your thoughts?

First, the good news: the Lady Razorbacks defeated the Tennessee Lady Vols 72-71 tonight. The victory marked the Lady 'Backs' first win ever in Knoxville and their first victory against UT since December 1996.

As for their male counterparts, the news wasn't so good. The Alabama Crimson Tide, playing for the fourth straight game without leading scorers JaMychal Green and Tony Mitchell, overcame a 12-point first-half deficit to win 79-68, sending the reeling Razorbacks to their second straight loss in Bud Walton and their fifth loss in their last six games.

Last-season collapses have been an unfortunately frequent occurrence for the Razorbacks in recent years. Stan Heath's 2005 team, which at one point during that season seemed like a halfway strong contender for an NCAA bid, lost five of its last six games in such ugly fashion that Frank Broyles went all Dr. Kevorkian on the team and pulled by the plug on the season by declining an NIT bid. John Pelphrey's 2009 squad followed shocking victories over two Top 10 teams - Texas and Oklahoma - with an equally shocking three-month-long skid: those Hogs lost 15 of their final 17 games. Hey - anybody can have a bad three months.

One year later, another Pelphrey squad frittered away a decent chance at an NCAA appearance by losing seven of its last eight games and in 2011, the Razorbacks fittingly closed out the John Pelphrey era with four losses in their final six games.

There's still time, I suppose, for these Razorbacks to pull out of their nosedive and re-secure the NIT bid that one has to assume has now slipped from their fingers. But I don't really see it happening. Believe me, I would love to be proven wrong. These guys have worked hard, and until recently, had performed much better than probably most of us would have predicted after Marshawn Powell's injury (and maybe even before it). But their lack of depth and size has exerted its gravitational pull. They looked exhausted. The lack of a consistent offensive force to complement B.J. Young isn't helping either.

Yes, these Hogs have come crashing back to Earth. I don't think they'll be taking flight again until next fall at the earliest.

The home-court winning streak is no more.

We Arkansas fans have seen the Razorbacks be on the receiving end of a lot of butt-kickings over the past decade, but that felt like the most complete and suffocating beatdown I've seen the Hogs absorb in a long, long while - maybe ever. The record books say my sentiment is not unfounded: Florida's 98-68 win marks the Razorbacks' biggest margin of defeat ever in Bud Walton.

To make an obvious quip, one has to wonder if the Hogs thought this was a road game. Just as in Arkansas' recent visits to Georgia and Tennessee, the Razorbacks' opponent came out on fire and never really cooled off. Florida's effort, though, was on a whole other level: the Gators shot 57 percent - 57 percent - from three-point range and 58 percent from the field overall. They didn't loaf at the line, either, sinking 29 of their 34 free-throw shots.

After tonight's game, Arkansas has allowed its opponent to shoot better than 50 percent from the field in three of its last four games. Their last three defeats have been by margins of 22 points, 19 points and 30 points, respectively, and their conference record now stands at 5-7. I'd long thought an NIT bid was in the bag. Not anymore. Instead of making a case for their first post-season bid in four years, the Hogs appear to be indulging in what has become a tradition in Fayetteville: a late-season collapse.

For obsessive fans of the 1994 national champion Razorbacks, it's been a nice three years. In 2009, Athletic Director Jeff Long and the university hosted a moving, weekend-long tribute to the team to celebrate the 15th anniversary of its championship. One year later, Rus Bradburd published his page-turning biography of Nolan, and last weekend ESPN premiered "40 Minutes of Hell," an excellent (though too short) documentary about the squad.

After the 10th anniversary of the season passed by without so much as a timeout tribute because of the feud between Nolan and the U of A, it's been wonderful to see this remarkable team get some overdue time back in the spotlight. I have to worry, though - and yes, sadly, "worry" is the right word - that the hosannas tossed this squad's way recently don't fully capture its brilliance.

Everybody talks about the team's full-court-pressing, fast-break style of play. But what made this squad truly memorable to me was its versatility. Fast-paced games; slower, bruising contests - the '94 Razorbacks prevailed in both. The different ways in which the Hogs won their tournament games left Sporting News columnist Dave Kindred and analyst/Grateful Dead groupie Bill Walton gushing about their completeness in the days after the championship.

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