Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

12/28/2011 at 3:37pm

The state of Arkansas saw a year of wonderment, brilliance, the high of victory and the low of unspeakable tragedy in the sports year that was 2011. College football success may have reached an all-time high among the larger Arkansas universities, and even college basketball picked itself off the mat in some locales. The Razorback Nation was rocked by the death late in the season of backup tight end Garrett Uekman, just as the Hogs reached their highest national ranking nearly 34 years leading up to the showdown with LSU. We witnessed two exciting high-profile job searches, and we again cringed at the antics of Arkansans in the professional spotlight.

It was quite a year. Here are some feats that stand out as the best or worst:

Best Touchdown
The all-time Razorback highlight reel will forever feature Joe Adams' 60x120-yard, this-way-and-that-way punt return for a touchdown against Tennessee. Besides being an instant ESPN "Play of the Day" it also kept Jarius Wright's juggling catch (where he batted the ball four times to keep it alive, all with a Vols defender on him, before making a reception) from being the national "Play of the Day." As far as we're concerned, it may be the play of the decade.

Houdini was definitely in the house.

Worst Resignation
Bill Mosiello, showing the most consistent managerial skills seen around the Arkansas Travelers in several years, had the Travs playing their best first-half baseball since perhaps the 1989 Texas League champs when he abruptly stepped down in midstream to join the University of Tennessee baseball coaching staff as an assistant. About the same time, after the Travelers had secured the first-half pennant, centerfield sensation Mike Trout was called up by the Angels. The Travelers took most of the second-half season to get their bearings again, but when they did, they stunned the second-half pennant winning Northwest Arkansas Naturals in four games before losing in the TL championship round to Midland.

Best Defense
Arkansas came out roaring on defense with a series of three-and-outs and completely dominating the opposition to the fans' delight — unfortunately, the foe was FCS-program Missouri State in the season opener. It took until another maroon Miss (Mississippi) State for the Razorbacks to show the same kind of dominance on defense. In between, Arkansas seemed almost certain to give up points and tons of yardage from the get-go week after week, even falling behind 17-0 to woeful Ole Miss. After LSU ran and passed over the Hogs in the season finale,  barely a week went by before defensive coordinator Willy Robinson "resigned," ending four tumultuous years on the Hill.

Best Impersonation of Danny Ford
Steve Roberts saw his ninth and final Arkansas State football team go 4-7 in 2010 before he was let go in favor of offensive coordinator Hugh Freeze. Roberts took a job as Cabot's athletic director and watched as his former ASU players went 10-2 for Freeze; 21 of the 22 Red Wolves starters were Roberts recruits. Freeze didn't wait around to see what came next in Jonesboro, as he took the Ole Miss job that came open when Little Rock native Houston Nutt was fired after four years. Nutt, of course, became head coach at Arkansas after Danny Ford's last 4-7 team at Arkansas in 1997 and guided Ford's players to a rousing 9-win season, starting a 14-year career coaching in the SEC that ended this fall in Oxford.

Best Coach
We don't think we'd get much argument in giving a three-way award this year to Hugh Freeze, Bobby Petrino and Clint Conque. All three coached up their teams to more wins than the talent seemed to dictate. Freeze took ASU to its most wins in 25 years and the Red Wolves swept through the Sun Belt Conference unbeaten. Conque's Bears had early injuries to deal with, but after a 1-3 start UCA won eight straight and reached the second round of the FCS playoffs. Petrino held together what seemed like a defenseless team at midseason to win 10 games again and wrap up Arkansas' first back-to-back 6-2 marks in the SEC. Petrino also was a tower of strength and yet compassionate in a way we'd never seen when the Hogs lost backup tight end Garrett Uekman, who died due to a previously undiagnosed heart problem one day after the team's 44-17 win over Mississippi State in Little Rock.

Worst Horsing Around
In a story that was startling to college football fans throughout the country, allegations of sexual indecency with children surfaced in November involving retired, longtime Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. The story quickly led to the firing of head coach Joe Paterno, the game's winningest coach, because Paterno reportedly had failed to notify the police after he was told in 2002 of one such instance involving his former assistant. More alleged Sandusky victims surfaced in the following weeks. The Arkansas-based Broyles Award stripped Sandusky of an award he had received in 1999 from the Broyles Award board for meritorious service to college football.

Best Shot
Solomon Bozeman's 23-foot jumper from just left of the key swished as time expired, giving UALR a 64-63 win over North Texas and the Sun Belt Conference's automatic berth into the NCAA men's basketball tournament. It marked UALR's first appearance in the NCAA Tournament since 1990, when Mike Newell was around. Bozeman, a 6-foot guard who transferred from South Florida, earned league Player of the Year and tournament MVP honors, and he guided the Trojans on a four-game sweep through the conference tournament in Hot Springs. It started with a blowout of South Florida, followed by an upset of top-seed Arkansas State. The NCAA tournament run was short-lived, however, as UALR squandered a 12-point lead and fell to UNC-Asheville in the early round at Dayton, Ohio.

Worst Question to a New Hire
A crowd of about 5,000 Razorback fans were on hand in early April when a Missouri student radio reporter persistently asked new Arkansas basketball coach Mike Anderson if he felt he should have personally apologized to the Missouri fans and told them he was leaving for a new job. Anderson waved down the hooting from the fans in the Bud Walton Arena stands, said the question was fair, and handled it all with aplomb.

Best Golf Performance
Heber Springs' Louis Lee won the U.S. Senior Amateur during the summer, but his toughest test on the way to the final had to be his quarterfinal matchup with big brother Stan (a first for the Senior Am to have brothers matched against each other). Louis won 2 and 1 and claimed the Lee brothers' second Senior Amateur trophy, as Stan had won in 2007.

World Golf Performance
John Daly of Dardanelle is always good for a yearly embarrassing blowup or two — and we know how much he enjoys landing in the "Outhouse" on the ArkansasSports360.com home page — but 2011 offered a handful of Daly worsts. The topper was his bad day at the Australian Open this fall when an unexpected first-round ruling set Daly off, whereupon he hit as many as seven shots in the water before running out of golf balls to hit, handed his card to his competitors and stormed off the course. An Aussie tournament official vowed never to invite Daly back again to its Open, and his invitation to the Australian PGA tourney was rescinded.

For those keeping score at home, Daly's world ranking at the time of his Australian meltdown was No. 666. Coincidence? We think not.

Worst Transfer
Rotnei Clarke's uncle in Oklahoma was interviewed by a Tulsa reporter in March, just after Arkansas had fired John Pelphrey but had not hired a new coach, saying Clarke didn't fit with the Razorbacks and needed to transfer from the UA. The 6-foot shooting guard, who had one year of eligibility remaining, asked athletic director Jeff Long for just that — his release to transfer — but Long convinced Clarke (or so it seemed) to stick around and find out who the new coach would be. By June, though, Clarke was again demanding a transfer, using contacts on the national college basketball scene to report that Arkansas wouldn't let him leave. Long acceded to his wishes, and Clarke finally left for Butler to sit out this season.

Best and Worst Football Hit
Freshman Marquel Wade delivered the most devastating hit to an opponent this year — unfortunately, it was illegal. Wade, one of the "gunners" on the Razorback punt team, seemed confused when a Vanderbilt punt returner began running and the speedy Wade slammed into him, only the ball was also just arriving. The outcry from everywhere but Arkansas seemed to force the SEC's hand to suspend Wade for week. Then, on top of that, the freshman violated a team rule and was suspended yet another week by Coach Bobby Petrino.

Worst Buildup to a New Hire
Arkansas State made THE football coaching hire of this off-season (that's not just us saying it, but many in the national media) when the ASU boosters chipped in to bring aboard Gus Malzahn, Auburn's offensive coordinator, to take over for Hugh Freeze, who left for Ole Miss after one great season.

However, in announcing the Malzahn hire to the entire state — maybe the first time at an ASU hire has generated this much interest and attention from the statewide media — ASU System President Chuck Welch and ASU athletic director Dean Lee took 26 minutes to make all funny and thank all the supporters and well-wishers for making the day possible before they finally brought up Malzahn. The new coach got 5 minutes of TV time before KATV cut away, and only about 5 minutes more before all the others in Little Rock had gone back to "regular programming" for a Wednesday afternoon.

Best Upset
Bentonville's dominance of the top programs in Arkansas high school football — rivaling that of Little Rock Central's in the 1950s — came to a shocking end in the Class 7A championship game when Fayetteville gambled on a two-point conversion in overtime and succeeded for a 29-28 win. Bentonville, whose winning streak reached 25 games, had beaten Fayetteville 41-6 during the regular season. For the past couple of years those Tigers, like the unstoppable Central Tigers of yesteryear, were forced to schedule nonconference competition out of state and typically destroyed those teams too.

Best Gamble
Pulaski Academy attempted and recovered SEVEN onside kicks in a football blowout of Cabot. The feat gained national notoriety in Sports Illustrated and other circles, just as has Coach Kevin Kelley's propensity for rarely if ever punting. This year, all the gambles worked in a 14-0 season for 4A state champion Bruins.

Jim Harris has covered Arkansas high school and college sports since 1976 and in that time has sampled lots of gumbo, making him almost an expert. Email Jim at jharris@abpg.com or follow him on Twitter @jimharris360.

Tagged: Joe Adams, Jarius Wright, Mike Anderson, Hugh Freeze, Bobby Petrino, Clint Conque, John Daly, Louis Lee, Kevin Kelley, Solomon Bozeman, Marquel Wade, Stan Lee, Jim Harris, Bill Mosiello, Rotnei Clarke, Arkansas Travelers