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SAN FRANCISCO — Nolan Richardson was on the phone from his Arkansas ranch, talking up the chances that the Razorbacks will beat Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke in the Elite Eight as his Razorbacks beat Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke for the national title in a different life.
The Hall of Famer, who is 80, laughed when asked by The Post what he would tell this Arkansas team before tip-off Saturday night at Chase Center.
“You know guys,” he said, “they’ve got all these McDonald’s All-Americans, and that’s OK. We’ve got some Burger King All-Americans.
“They’ve got these numbers by their names — the No. 10 player in America, the No. 5 player. We don’t have any numbers. But believe me, numbers don’t add up to winning championships. It’s people. It’s the Jimmys and the Joes. They’re the ones that add up, not the numbers.”
Richardson maintained he likes Arkansas’ odds against Duke this year, just as he liked those odds in 1994 in Charlotte, N.C.
“I watch them all the time, and [Eric Musselman] has done a magnificent job,” he said. “If anyone’s asking, ‘Who’s going to win the national championship?’ I’m going to pick the University of Arkansas. ‘Who’s going to the Final Four?’ I’m going to pick Arkansas. When they beat Gonzaga [Thursday] night it was close to the score I predicted.”
Richardson said in a USA Today interview that an older, more mature Arkansas team would be “three, four, five points better” than Duke if both were playing at peak efficiency. Of course, in the NCAA Tournament, both teams rarely play to their full potential, which is why three No. 1 seeds — including the top overall seed, Gonzaga — had been eliminated from the field by the end of Thursday night.
“The raggedy ride is better than a smooth walk,” Richardson said. “If you’ve got to go 10 miles in the snow, the guy in a car that’s falling apart is going to get there before the guy who has a smooth walk.”
No college coach ever forced opponents to take that raggedy ride up-court quite the way Richardson did with his legendary “40 Minutes of Hell” defense. Duke found out the hard way in that bygone national championship game, two years after Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill had finished winning back-to-back titles.
Laettner and Hurley were gone, leaving Hill, Antonio Lang and Marty Clark as a senior class that had gone 18-1 in the NCAA Tournament before facing Arkansas. Duke held a 10-point lead in the second half before that relentless Razorbacks pressure took its toll in the final minutes, when the Blue Devils missed their most consequential looks while Arkansas’ Scotty Thurman made a shot for the ages.
With the score tied, less than a minute to go, and the shot clock racing toward zero, Dwight Stewart gathered an errant pass near the top of the key and fired to the right wing to Thurman, who immediately launched a 3-pointer that required a sky-high launch angle to avoid the considerable wingspan of a leaping and lunging Lang.
“We threw up a prayer and it was answered,” Richardson recalled. “Scotty made the greatest shot in Arkansas history, but the guy who bobbled the ball, Stewart, also made the greatest pass in Arkansas history.”
Richardson had his players believing they could beat any team on any night in any gym. Whenever the Razorbacks did lose, their coach preferred to say they ran out of time rather than they got beaten.
“What would have happened if you had missed that shot?” Richardson once asked Thurman.
“Coach, with 50 seconds to play, we would have gotten the ball back,” Thurman responded.
“You’re damn right,” Richardson said. “And we were going to win.”
Many years later, Richardson, who won national titles at the junior college and major college levels, and an NIT at Tulsa, said of Thurman’s answer: “That’s what coaching is all about. Making young men believe they can do something that might seem impossible to others.”
With 1,201 career victories to his name, including 100 in the NCAA Tournament, the retiring Krzyzewski has done that more than any Division I coach dead or alive. (Coach K beat Richardson in the 1990 Final Four.) The former Arkansas coach cited Krzyzewski’s staggering durability in a favorable comparison with John Wooden.
“It’s incredible that Mike is still able to get to an Elite Eight at 75 years old,” Richardson said.
After he beat Krzyzewski in 1994, Richardson was joined on the court by President Bill Clinton, the former Arkansas governor, who told the Razorbacks’ coach, “I’ve been waiting all my life for something like this to happen.”
If Arkansas beats Duke again, it won’t be on account of 40 minutes of hell. Musselman’s defense is more like 40 minutes of purgatory, funneling the opponent toward hell.
Richardson will be watching from his Fayetteville ranch, where he tends to his wife’s health issues. He believes the Razorbacks will prevail, but either way, he knows this game won’t be decided by the recruiting profiles on each side.
“Stats can’t measure the amount of heart it takes to be a winner,” Nolan Richardson said.
No, stats can’t measure the willpower of his Burger King All-Americans.
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