I believe Sanchez, Moore, and Clark will all improve inside the paint before next season, and I believe Fortson will become a more reliable floor general.

If all of this can happen, I have no doubt that things will start opening up for Rotnie Clarke to be a more consistant shooter, and be a better overall player.

The addition of the Adams kid could be a big help in that regard too, if he commits.

Powell will give us even more muscle inside the paint, and could be good enough to see a lot of playing time.

We've just got to stay the course guys. It should get a lot better.

It is not a good sign. We'll see.

We all loved John for several reasons. One way to sum those up is that he was the anti-stanheath. Poor Stan was a sweet guy who came off as a pretty good recruiter. He was constipated as a floor coach or as a head coach. His teams played lazy, with poor chemistry, and little basketball IQ but, he put some talent on the floor.

John comes along with his passion and determination, his Kentucky pedigree, retired jersey and all of that. He is firey as bench coach and does good coach speak. His teams play hard and with some chemistry but so far with poor basketball IQ and less talent than one would hope.

You can say great things about Eddie and Nolan. They were wonderful coaches in many ways, very human in others. As different as they were though, they both had a philosophy that relied on some form of Xs and Os. That seems to be the one place where Pelphry is too much like Stan. He talks a good game but you don't see much basketball smarts on the floor.

I'm sure that is hard to do with 8 players when the other teams have 13. I know it will improve next year.

If you remember correctly when Frank Broyle fired Nolan Richardson Broyle told the hog fans the university and him would take their time in getting a top name coach for the job, but they didn't. Before you knew it; they had hire Stan Heath. Yeah,a big name coach,.I don't think so. Broyle and company kept Heath around for four years. This was too many years for me personally. If Broyle and company had not rush to hire Heath we might have gotten a big name coach back then, but with Heath's record after four years there was no way Arkansas could get a big name coach.

If Broyle had hire John Pelphrey instead of Stan Heath Arkansas might be a powerhouse in college basketball now like they were under Sutton and Richardson. Instead of going through growing pain with players with very limited playing time from last year and so many freshmen on his team.

Does fans not remember what Coach Pelphrey's and his team did last season with Stan Heath's former players? Coach Pelphrey just need to recruit more kinds of his players and he will do this. I think next season we will see a different ball team, because we will have experience players and young players to make a good Razorback team. Coach Pelphrey is a good young coach and Arkansas was lucky to get him. So hog fans please be patience with Coach Pelphrey and his team. I think Arkansas Razorback Basketball Program and their fans will see brighter days from Coach Pelphrey. If Coach Pelphrey teams don't improve in a couple years then a coaching change may be needed, but not now and maybe not even after next season. .

John Pelphrey is in a terrible situation with this team, but it's not unfixable.

Does anyone remember when Nolan brought in the "Big O" and May-Day?

He already had 3 years of implementing his system of play, and not a lot of Hog fans were all that thrilled about it either.

Once things started turning around, because of the newly found talent Richardson was finally able to recruit, combined with some of the exsperience and depth he'd already been coaching for 3 years, critical fans (including myself) started raising their eyebrows a little more, and running their mouths a little less.

Remember guys, Oliver Miller, Todd Day, and Lee Mayberry didn't have the resposibilities then our current Freshmen have now.

Mayberry may have started from the beginning, but I don't remember Miller and Day ever starting a game until midway through their Freshman year.

They had time to sit and learn, even though they were more talented than the most exsperiensed players on the team.

They didn't have the immediate pressure to carry their team like Fortson, Clarke, and Henry are doing, and even when they did start, a lot of the time they weren't playing from behind, which is one of the worst situations to have when coaching Freshmen.

We all have to have a little faith in John Pelphrey, no matter how bad it looks, and just to drive home the point I'm trying to make, everyone ask yourself this question:

If you could have any other coach in America, give them the exact same players, with the exact same situation, (exspulsion of and suspensions of 3 different Freshman, and the Marcus Monk episode) hand him the keys to this team and say "Ok buddy, fire her up!" who would it be, and what would the exspectations be?

This team sets was too many lazy screens to get people open consistently. The post guy can't establish position on the blocks. I sense an unease with the coaching that is joining the unease with the recruiting.

A few really good players can solve all of this.

Did Norman Dale throw Buddy out of practice? Did he sit Ray, and finish a game with 4 players to prove a point? All of this is growing pains and nothing more. They'll get there. Most just don't have the patience to stay the course.

Remember…Nolan might have been fired had we not staged a miraculous comeback in the NIT against Arkansas State. How soon we forget our own history.

Now, six weeks on, the Hogship is on the shoals of despair and UK looks competent, even though they only have one real player. We have lost Monk, through what appears to be a bureaucratic travesty, we have a snotty nosed point guard who thinks he is more important than he is, we have a very slow power forward and a skinny center and we have no bench depth that can be seen with the naked eye.

So, what do you expect? This is a work in progress and all the naysayers need to take a pill or two.

Anytime you hire a young coach you are taking a big chance. Billy the Kid came out of nowhere to make Florida a national power from nothing. Yes, Nolan and Eddie each in their day were looked at as a sure thing of sorts. Nolan would have been fired after his second year if not for a very sick little girl.

I don't remember who was available when Heath shut down the interview process. We went after big names before John but of course we end up with the Altman disaster.

Frank stayed way too long. White was a joke. We are lucky we are not worse off. No one is going to open firejohnpelphry.com. We are going to have to recruit very hard, very well. If John is losing it, that is up to Long help him right the ship, change direction.

Pelphry may have shown up a little too glad to be here and not enough ready to go to work. We shall see if he can save himself or if he is just a footnote in college basketball. But, that is not the hogs future hanging in the balance, only John's. He will get another year. If he wins 6 to 8 conference games he will get a fourth, less than 5 and he may not.

Yep, its ugly. But, Arkansas is two years away from its best home state basketball class in history. John will show enough to be here to reap he rewards or they will bring in someone who will.

We will be back.