Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Razorback football camp begins next week, but there's a lot to talk about today that's not football related. It's been a busy week for Razorback basketball, been a busy week for Razorback baseball. Basketball team starting their exhibition tour of the Bahamas tonight. We'll talk about that with Ethan Westerman who's here in studio with me. Want to tell you that we're brought to you by Eglin's Best in Arkansas. Greatness starts early, before the pads go on, before the crowd roars, the day begins at the breakfast table. Eglins Best delivers superior nutrition with more vitamin D and less saturated fat than ordinary eggs. You can start strong with Eglins Best better taste, better nutrition and better eggs. For more information eglinsbest.com we're also brought to you by Bentonville Glass. They've been serving their community since 1971. They're committed, professional and versatile. If you're looking for a quality leader in northwest Arkansas or looking for skilled craftsmanship, look no further than Bentonville Glass for all your glass market needs with the highest quality products you can. You can buy and see them now at 507 South Main in Bentonville or online at bentonvilleglass.com if you're watching us on YouTube or Twitter or Facebook, welcome. We post all of our videos on those platforms. Just search for Whole Hog sports. We also put an audio version of our podcast on our Apple Podcast and Spotify page. We're still weekly. We're going to be weekly for probably about another three or four weeks. Then we'll go back to a daily podcast format once football season, right before football season begins. Ethan Westerman here. Razorbacks play in the Bahamas tonight. They're going to play is it the the Bahamas national team, I think is is first up. All of these games are going to be televised or streamed on Flow Sports. Matt Zimmerman's down there. He's going to be on the TV broadcast. Chris Sylvester is going to be handling the play by play. I believe he's a play by play voice for Cal Poly. I don't know. Like, like if you're at Cal Poly and you get the call, hey, we want you to go to the Bahamas and do four Arkansas games. Yeah, probably take that call.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you say yes probably every single time.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: So they're going to have these games. I believe this is 6:00pm Central tip off tonight. All these games are being played at the the Baja Mar resort there in in the Bahamas.
John Caliperi spoke on Monday this Week he invited some reporters over to watch a small, you know, like 20 minutes or so of practice. Were you able to glean anything out of what you saw there?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it would maybe be a disservice to just take too, you know, big of observations from about the. We actually were supposed to only get 20 minutes of watching them practice probably got closer to 30, but it wasn't like we were watching a whole lot of just scrimmaging. They did a little bit of like two on one type of stuff, some defensive drills where you could like see a few things, but I just don't think we saw enough of the up and down the court action to where it's like you can really just make two just grand observations. But I do think that one thing that like you're going to hear this mentioned a lot this year, like you're going to be so sick and tired of hearing about Arkansas being tall and long and athletic. But I mean, it's just how they are.
Whenever you have that many guys who are six, 11 and above, I think it's six of them and you have some, some seven foot guys you have, you just have a lot of length on this team that we see they kind of maybe try to combat what killed them last year toward the end, whenever they played those bigger teams, how they just honestly couldn't hang that you knew that their tournament path, if they were going to get beat, it was probably going to be against a team that had some really elite big men. I think that they tried to compensate for it this year and added a whole lot of height to the roster, a lot of length. They're going to be, I think, a lot better defensively. I don't think that's too crazy to say right now here on July 31, just from watching even a little bit of practice. They just have, I think, a roster that's more equipped to be good defensively.
But yeah, no, I mean, the moment that John Calipari doesn't tell you that he likes his team, you should be worried.
He told us he likes his team.
I think that you look at the talent level, you look at the physical attributes, you look at it all put together and I think it's easy to see why he likes his team. And I think that fans, you know, this is a type of team that you could see going deep in March Madness if it all comes together the right way.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: I'm looking at the roster here, I mean, and who knows who of these players, you know, actually plays and logs significant minutes I figure they'll all play against the Bahamas, but as we all know, the roster will shrink as it always does when the regular season rolls around. But you got, I count five players who are six, 11 and above. You got Caleb Arrigo, who reclassified and came in early. You've got Mika Marinin, who he's not going to play at least tonight. I don't know that he's going to play at all in the Bahamas. There's some eligibility stuff there with him that has to get worked out.
Makker, he's 7 foot tall. Cooper Bowser, the transfer from Furman, he's 6 foot 11.
Paulo Semedo, 7 foot 1. I mean, there's some.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: And then there's the Russian guy, Ilya.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Oh, am I missing one?
[00:05:10] Speaker B: He's seven foot.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Ilya Frolov. Thank God for this pronunciation guy, by the way, because, I mean, there are some unique names on this roster.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: And what stands out to me is even the guys who aren't, you know, 6, 11 and above are like just physical guys. Like J.J. andrews is built. That guy is not going to get pushed around against people at his position. I mean, Jordan Smith, that's he. I think he's going to be really good. This is already, everybody knows this. They think he's going to be really good defensively, but just watching him in person and seeing how he kind of commands the defense a little bit when he's out there, I just think he's the type that is going to be, you know, getting a lot of steals, getting out in transition. And then like even some of the smaller guys, like Jeremiah Wilkinson is 61 1, 85, but he's a built guy. Like, these are just physical basketball players. These look like guys who could go play football.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: A lot of them then they need that because they just, they have been pushed around too much, especially last year, but even to a certain extent the year before, you know, that's, that's kind of been during Caliperia, Arkansas years. A lack of a real physical inside presence and we'll see if they've got that this year. But they certainly, it seems like, it seems like they are more equipped to have that this year than they have been and way more equipped this year than they've been the last couple of years.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: I'm gonna need your pronunciation guide for this one too. For Caleb, the freshman, the early or the reclassified player.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Aurigo.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Arigo.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Yeah, he's not on the Arkansas pronunciation guy, but that's from another pronunciation.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Well, he's 611 and every bit of 240. He looks like, I mean, he's what, 17? Yes. This guy looks like he could be a senior. I was getting him in like this is the first time watching them. Didn't have numbers down and stuff. And I for a second got him and Cooper Bowser mixed up because Cooper Bowser, I think is. He's 611, 225. So they're, they're the same height, just 15 pounds apart. But like I was thinking Caleb was Bowser for a second. I was like, oh, that has to be like the senior.
I mean, this kid is built, you know, I think everybody has worries about high schoolers who enroll early and play early, reclassify. I look at him and I'm like, okay, no, I don't have any physical concerns with you. Maybe it's between the ears right now that you have to learn a lot more, but at least physically, I mean, this guy is every bit college basketball player.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: And you never want to assume that somebody's going to be on campus for more than one year anymore. But you look at somebody like that and you think, what if you could get him to his sophomore year and 18 years old and a year in, you know, like, like an off season of strength and conditioning? Like, like, what could he project to look like in two years?
That's, that's got to be exciting for them, you know, because not everybody's going to be one and done. We don't know if he's going to be or not. I have no idea.
I don't see him on a bunch of ESPN's mock drafts or anything for next summer. But I think that when you can, there's always an excitement. And it doesn't matter what the sport is. When you see somebody and you're like, you know that that guy is going to be able to look a whole lot different in two or three years than he does right now. And he feels like one that you can certainly say that about.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And it's just, I mean, their whole roster, it's hard to not get excited about the depth of a lot of the. Like, a lot of these guys are kind of in that boat.
Is it Mapir maker?
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Mapair.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Mapair maker. He is every bit of seven foot. I thought he was even taller looking, but his wingspan is crazy. Like I. His wingspan has to be longer than his height. This guy's. There's just like a lot of things I think you can get excited about, especially defensively. And like, this guy is, I Mean, I would hate to try and go up against him. I'd get my stuff swatted to outer space or maybe back to Australia. I think that's where he's from.
It's.
This team just has a lot of those physical traits that you need, I think, in college basketball. And you know, I do think there is going to be some risk probably with teams that get reclassified guys if you're relying on them to be a big part of your team that season. But John Caliperi said that he thinks it's going to be something that we continue to see just a lot more of as years go. I'm sure the five year eligibility has something to do with it. Maybe how teams are planning to, you know, use maybe now a reclassified year as a development year for somebody to be more ready for their true freshman. I don't even know what we'll call it anymore.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: You know, there's risk associated with every type of recruiting strategy. Like, I'm sure that when Michigan put together their championship team last year of, you know, nothing but starting portal players, there's a risk to that. There's a risk of those guys not coming together and, you know, playing well as a team.
You think about some of these teams, like Arizona for instance, who go out and, you know, they're like overwhelmingly majority international players. There is a risk to putting together that type of team. I don't know if this is going to work out for Arkansas in terms of getting to a Final Four or winning a championship or anything like that, but like, I feel like sometimes you kind of have to take a risk because, you know, like doing it the same way over and over again is usually going to get you comparable results.
They've been to the Sweet 16 two years in a row. They've had good seasons.
But certainly, you know, when you're paying your head coach $8 million or whatever that number is and you're paying your staff a really hefty salary of tenured assistant coaches, like the expectations are to go more than the sweet 16. I think that's what you've seen from Arkansas this year is number one. They've learned, I think, a little bit about what has been their kryptonite, especially last season, inside play. And then it's like, hey, we did this a certain way for a couple of years. Let's change this up. Let's get some international flair in here. Let's get some of these guys who are going to reclassify and just see what they can do. And you know, Throw the ball out there and we'll see.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that they've got, just from the way I look at this is going to be. I'd be shocked if this isn't their best defensive team they've had under Calipera yet. The first year they were pretty good defensively and the offense was really slow to come along. I think this team is going to be better equipped to maybe start off the season stronger offensively while having good defense and just. I'll be curious to see what this team can be by March. I think you always are with any college basketball team. You're curious to see the progression of how it goes. I think this one just with the youth especially, I'm just like. I could see it being the type of season where they have to learn a lot in non conference play with this youth, but they, they have the talent, they have the skill, they have the physical attributes to I think really progress well throughout a season and be playing their best ball maybe toward the end of the year.
I think I forgot exactly how Coach Cal brought it up, how he worded it, but somebody asked about JJ Andrews and he basically, he was getting into how physical JJ Is that he's not going to get pushed around, but he's like, what's it like when you have like three or four Billy Richmonds out there? And I think that that's what this team like. They just have more of those players that are going to just be that kind of spark plug, that just physical defensive, but also skilled on the offensive end. I think that, you know, between Abdou Ture, I think that's how you say his last name.
And then J.J. andrews and Billy, I mean even. Yeah, Jordan Smith for sure. I just think they have a bunch of. I know Cal's been calling them dogs this summer, but it's a pretty good term, I think.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Term of endearment.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: It's like being called a dirt bag in baseball.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah, but they're, they've got a lot
[00:12:59] Speaker A: of them, the schedule. They're gonna play the Bahamas national team. That's six o' clock tonight. Again, all these are going to be on FLO Sports. Tomorrow they'll play Carleton University. That's out of Canada. There's going to be a 5 o' clock tip off on Saturday night. They won't play Sunday.
Monday they're back in action. They'll play Toros del Valle, Valle, maybe Columbia. Five o' clock tip off Monday night and then on Tuesday they'll finish up this exhibition tour, they'll play University of Calgary, that's out of Canada, at 11am Central Time. Again, all of those are going to be on Flow Sports. Anthony Christensen is down there covering these for us on our website wholehogsports.com some scheduling news this week for Razorback basketball. John Calipari said they're going to play Memphis in an exhibition. He also said they're going to play Kansas in an exhibition. Or I think he said, I think we're going to play Kansas in exhibition. I believe that's how he said it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
Ku, this week they announced that they're going to play an exhibition game against Duke at Allen Field House. I believe they've already got one scheduled against Louisville, and I think they're going to play one of the smaller school states.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: I saw Pitt State.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Pitt State, I think, yeah, the Gorillas from just up the road. Gorillas, yeah, home of Sam Pittman.
They. I believe Pitt State's going to play at Allen Field House, too. So I don't think you can play more than three exhibitions.
And there are some KU reporters who.
You indicated this week that some people there in Lawrence were pushing back against this notion that KU and Arkansas were going to play an exhibition. We'll see where they play Memphis at. I don't know if that was said.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: I would think Fayetteville. It would just make sense to me.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: I would think so. But, you know, you also wonder, like Calipari, he really likes taking this team out. Like, he's a showman, you know, and when you're a showman, what do you want to do? You want to go take your team and. Or, you know, whatever. You want to go take your show on the road in these grand environments and arenas. It's one of the reasons that you take them to the Bahamas now. I think they're playing like a hotel lobby or not a lobby, but like a, like a hotel conference room or something. We've all seen these, these games on. On TV where you're wondering, like, man, what are they. What are they playing in? Yeah, like the week of Thanksgiving. I think that's kind of the, the setting that they're gonna be playing in there at the Bahamas. But you look at the, you know, he's taking them to play Michigan State and Detroit on Thanksgiving. They're taking them to play Phoenix or play Arizona. In Phoenix, they're taking the team to play Indiana at Madison Square Garden. There's a report out here this week, and I don't know, I don't know if how verifiable this is, but that they're looking to, that they're possibly going to play Virginia in Washington, D.C. and of course there's a lot of people like saying these are neutral site games. You can play Virginia and D.C. you're going to play Michigan and they're, you know, in their backyard in Detroit. You can play Arizona in their backyard in Phoenix. These feel like road games that just aren't on campus. Now I'm sure there will be, you know, like I think that there's written in the Arizona contract that they will have a return neutral site game down the road. Where that is, who knows. Is that Dallas? Is it Tulsa? Is it North Little Rock?
We'll see.
But you know, he wants to take this team out on the road and there's a lot of people, you know, who I think are a little frustrated right now that they're not going to have a big marquee non conference game. It looks like Bud Walton arena this year.
But I say all that, you know, like Memphis, they played Memphis at FedEx Forum last year in an exhibition game. And so the conventional wisdom says that they would come back to Fayetteville. I just don't know that you can use conventional wisdom all the time when you think about Calipari because of how outside the box he gets with this schedule.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's. Who knows. And also to his credit, the other day he was very hesitant when he was asked about exhibitions. He was like, is that on with Kansas? Like he did not know himself. It was pretty clear. But he spoke with enough authority on it that you were like, well, he said this, it's out there, but it just wasn't like super like verifiable like how he said it. It was just kind of like he ended up saying something along the lines of I just get on the bus when they tell me to.
I just sit on my seat and we go there. And yeah, I'd be curious to see if they would go on the road for an exhibition, knowing how much they're already going to be on the road
[00:17:23] Speaker A: and they're not going to have. And they're not going to have a lot of. Well, I think we're saying the same thing. They're not going to have a whole lot of on campus games. And so I think, you know, like, like nobody ever used to think about exhibition games being kind of a big part of the season ticket package. And I don't know if it is part of the season Ticket package. I don't, I don't have basketball tickets, so I don't know this, but I would think that it might be. But either way, when Purdue came here for that exhibition a couple of years ago, like that place was packed on a Saturday afternoon during football season. And so I would suspect that whenever Gonzaga comes in, the place is going to be pretty full too, for an exhibition. It was like that when KU came in a couple of years ago. Like it kind of offsets a little bit of.
Maybe you don't have that big marquee opponent, but the administration still wants to, you know.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Like get some income here off of, you know, a big basketball game before SEC play rolls around.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: And I know that John Calipari likes to use these exhibitions. A lot of programs like to use them for like charity. I mean, for instance, the one against Cincinnati last year was towards some sort of care source.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Care source, which I got an email from them the other day. They're affiliated somehow with the game in Detroit this year.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Oh, gotcha. And then the one in Memphis obviously was Saint.
But I just would be curious to see if they get two home exhibitions this year, how they kind of treat those if they are both charity, if there's one that they try and make a buck off of. Because they're not going to be able to do that really until sec.
A big, big crowd.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: It's one of those deals where it's like, it feels like there's a lot of mouths to feed from basketball scheduling. Like North Little Rock. They want a game. Are they going to get a game this year? I don't have any reason to think they're not going to.
But you know, you just start thinking it's like there's only limited number of, of. Of dates that are there when you know, you're going to North Carolina for the ACC challenge. And then, you know, we mentioned these neutral site games that they have and you know, maybe or maybe not that Virginia D.C. thing is going to happen. They've only got four non conference games scheduled right now in Fayetteville. They got five dates left that they can fill. We got a couple of those yesterday.
Robert Morris on November 10, Oral Roberts on December 5. Those go with a couple of games that have, you know, previously been reported on Central Michigan and Texas, Rio Grande Valley late in the non conference play, late in December. But it's going to be interesting to see how this shakes out.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Because the more that you fill up those games where you're going to, you
[00:19:45] Speaker A: know, D.C. i mean, like They've enjoyed going to Dallas the last couple of years.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: And the more you do that, I mean, it's. Unless that Little Rock game, all of a sudden you get into like the football type of talk where you're like, how many for that, your home ticket package are you missing out on? And you know, maybe this is a terrible idea, maybe it's a horrible idea. And I know people in Little Rock, I mean, I grew up going to some of those games. I love going, you know, a nice little non conference game on a Saturday in November or whatever, December usually, but you know, maybe play Memphis in an exhibition in North Little Rock. Like it's.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: I don't know if that's gonna happen. I don't know if that's speculation on our part.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: But I honestly think if you bring in a team that's like Memphis is more exciting than some of these teams that have gone to North Little Rock and played the Razorbacks in the regular season. If you actually played an exhibition game in Little Rock against a team of a high caliber team, I think it could be more exciting than the thing that goes on in December. I know it's a tradition and I like protecting traditions if you can, if it makes sense.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: But one of the things that's made that game down there at. Was it Simmons Bank Arena. Now I still want to call it All Tell arena, that's what it opened as many years ago. But one of the things that's made it good is that they put it on a Saturday when school's either out or finals are going on. I can't remember exactly which, but basically it's where you're probably not going to get the same crowd in Fayetteville that you would get in North Little Rock. So they're going to fill up a 16,000 seat arena there. Whereas you played in Fayetteville. You might get 10 to 12,000 in a 20,000 seat arena. It's just got a different feel and a different vibe. And there's a lot of people who will go to that game there in Central Arkansas that wouldn't come to a game here.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Otherwise it's a home court down there. Like it's what War Memorial I feel like used to be with football, whenever they played LSU where it was and some of these other SEC opponents where it was really loud, really hostile.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: I mean, they would put the LSU games you kind of in a similar, you know, similar capacity. You'd play the day after Thanksgiving and all the students are home and you're not going to, you know, I Mean, you're not going to fill up the stadium in Fayetteville. You could fill up a stadium that's got 20,000 fewer seats.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well. And that arena gets really loud down there. I know.
I think it was Eric Musselman's first year.
Was it Lipscomb? They played somebody down there and it was really, really close. Valparaiso, maybe.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Valpo was a game where I think they, yeah, went to overtime.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: It was Valpo. They lost. They almost lost a Lipscomb under Muscleman there. It was a Valpo. But that arena for the Valpo game was ridiculous.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: You get a good game in there. Yeah, you get a good game in there and people will, people will react.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: But all that to say, I do think there's actually some. You can get creative with exhibitions and maybe incorporate that arena into the mix if it's possible and bring a really good opponent in there. I think that would excite a lot of people.
And Central Arkansas, not a whole lot
[00:22:41] Speaker A: of football news this week. Billy Ray Smith Jr. Did pass away on Wednesday, 64 years old. His family said that he had dementia.
They said that it was caused by cte. Now, as I understand it, you cannot diagnose CTE until posthumously. And so they're going to donate his brain to Boston University. And, and, you know, they'll. They'll go through the formal process of diagnosing, you know, whether or not he had that. But, you know, it's my understanding from talking to some people who knew him that, you know, he'd been in some tough shape for the last couple of years. I did not see Billy Ray Smith Jr. Play. But, you know, I did, you know, grow up in a household or in a family, Ethan, where, you know, you hear these stories from your dad and your, and your granddad. And, you know, and your dad said, well, Billy Ray Smith Jr. Was, was just a great, great player. And then, you know, his dad types in or chimes in, well, you should have seen Billy Ray Smith senior. Like, like the Billy Ray Smith legacy, the, the father son legacy at Arkansas. Really? I, I don't know that there's a whole lot of these in college football. Like, like, there's a lot of really good.
There have been a lot of really good, you know, dads and sons who have played college football.
But where you've got two men who are undoubtedly like two of the greatest that have ever played their position at one school, that's what makes this really unique. And you know, Billy Ray Smith, he. There's only four players in Arkansas football history who have been a consensus All American twice. This is the list. Ethan Lloyd Phillips, who won an Outland Trophy. Billy Ray Smith Jr.
Sean Andrews, who.
Anybody who saw him play, you know, how good he was. And then, you know, Darren McFadden, obviously, you know, won a couple of Doak Walker Awards and was the Heisman finalist a couple times. That's the list.
And I was talking with somebody yesterday, I said, you know, like, if somebody wanted to make the argument that Billy Ray Smith Jr. Is the greatest football player in Razorback history, I would listen to that argument, because again, there just are not a lot of people who have those credentials. And he played during an era. You and I were talking about this yesterday. He played during an era where, you know, McFadden played.
And everything at that time goes on YouTube like, like, you know, there's highlights on YouTube day of or next day of everything that he had done.
Bill Ray Smith Jr. Didn't play in that era. And he also didn't play a position like running back where, you know, you're touching the ball 75, 80% of the snaps, or McFadden's case, maybe even more than that because of the way they used him at Arkansas.
You know, you go back and you watch the Billy Ray Smith video highlights. Just, you know, just a phenomenal, you know, player off the edge at Arkansas. And I was talking with one of his teammates yesterday. They said, I really wish they would have kept sack totals in his day because he may have a sack record that could. Could never be touched at Arkansas. He does have two records at Arkansas that have never come close to being touched. 63 tackles for a loss.
That is, I believe, 16 more. That's the closest, which was Trey Flowers, who was pretty good. And then he had.
He had 353 or 3, maybe 363 yards of lost yardage on. On those tackles. And as Bob Holt, you know, can. Can only and only. And the. Only the way Bob Holt can do. I went back and read a story that he wrote. Whenever Billy Ray Smith went into the College Football hall of Fame, he said Billy Ray Smith threw players for 3½ football fields for a loss.
Kind of puts it into perspective.
[00:26:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, the tackles for losses, that blows my mind.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: That number and how many of those
[00:26:36] Speaker B: are sacks, I would like to see, like where that stacks, I would have to figure out. I would assume that. That if you look at like fbs,
[00:26:44] Speaker A: it'd have to be up there.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it'd have to be up there. I mean, because that's just such a crazy total. I mean, geez. And also, you think about. I've been down there to Atlanta For Media Days, SEC Media Days the College Football hall of Fame. And it's. It's. You know, there's not a whole lot of Arkansas in there, to be honest, inducting 16 people.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: And a lot of those are like, you know, Jimmy Johnson and Danny Ford, who. They're really in there because of something they did elsewhere.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: But he's one of them that he's in there for what he. With the Razorbacks. And it's like him. Darren McFadden.
There's a few more, but it's. Yeah, he's definitely everything you read and you see, you understand why he's a legend.
And I think he was in the draft that he was taking in the first defensive player off the board, Right?
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Probably so. And that was the draft. I believe they had John Elway. I think it might have had Marcus Allen in that draft. I mean, it was a really good.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: He. He was fifth overall, right?
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Fifth overall to the Chargers.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: The great story about him, he went to high school in Plano, Texas, right outside of Dallas. And it was between Arkansas and Texas to get him to come play college football. And his dad told him that he could either drive a new car to Fayetteville or he could walk to Austin. And so the decision was made there. But Billy Ray Smith Jr. Passed away this week. And there's been. It's been really interesting to read, just kind of the outpouring of tributes to him, not only here in Arkansas, but also in Southern California, San Diego in particular, where he just did a lot of things in the community, had a really long broadcasting career, was a television anchor there, did some radio work.
Just real big loss in the college football world.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: This week I pulled up, just for fun, the Arkansas. They just dropped the 2026 media guide for football. And I just wanted to do, you know, put in his name real quick just because it's always, you know, you put in a former player's name sometimes, like. Cause you're trying to find something, you find a result or two.
He's all over this thing. I mean, it's just like he's.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Well, between he and his dad. I think if you just type in Billy Ray Smith, you'll find like 40 results.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: In the Arkansas football media guide.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: It's just. It just goes to show because this is not all former players are in a media guy this many times. You got to be really good to. To have this many, your name listed this many times in there. But yeah, he's.
It's one of those deals where I like now as someone who was born in the year 2000, I want to pull up like his film and just watch this guy because something about a really good defensive player in like the 80s, their film is just, it's so fun.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Well, Southwest Conference football was pretty good then.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: And also that's just back when, you know, there weren't as many like penalties for hits.
And it's like you see some hits, you're like, oh, yeah, that would have been the targeting call immediately in today's football. That back then was just a, you know, go get them war machines.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: Got some highlights of them. You ought to go, you ought to go watch that. Some, some news in Arkansas baseball this week.
You know, the week began with the signing deadline for the MLB draft. That feels like an eternity, to be honest with you. Yeah, there's been so much that's happened since then. Everybody who was drafted, whether they be a Razorback player or one of these signing or one of these committed players who had, you know, committed to Arkansas out of the transfer portal, everybody signed. So all 15 players signed. Arkansas is not going to get any of these drafted players to campus. The 12 drafted Razorbacks, they signed for a cumulative total of about like just under 14.8 million. There was only one team in college baseball that had more signing bonuses than Arkansas and that was Georgia Tech. And a lot of that was due to the fact that they had two players who were taken very early in the draft. And I think between them they made like $17 million. So it's good money if you can get it.
But Arkansas did really well in the draft this year and I feel like they did really well in the draft in a couple of ways. Like it's one of those deals where they had 12 players taken, but you didn't really expect any of those 12 players to be back. I know that with, excuse me, with Carson Wiggins, there was some hope that he might return. But I also think that there were a lot of people who thought whenever he hurt his elbow against Florida in 2025, knowing that he was going to be a draft eligible sophomore, knowing the timeline for that type of recovery, there were a lot of people who thought, you have seen him pitch his final pitch as a Razorback and that was the case.
So it's one of those deals where from a PR perspective, it's a good year because you get 12 players drafted. Only Georgia had more. You get, you know, almost $15 million in signing bonuses. Only Georgia Tech had more. But I don't know that it really affected the next year's roster a whole lot. What happened to you in the draft?
It felt like they, that a good chunk of the, what I would call the retainable players that they had, they were able to retain. You're going to get Nolan Souza coming back, you're going to get T.J. poppy coming back.
You know, a number of the draft eligible portal players are going to come in and they didn't have any other high school signings taken this year. And so I think like from a draft perspective, Nate Thompson mentioned this a couple of weeks ago when I talked to him. It's like a net positive for Arkansas. So that was the beginning of the week, MLB draft deadline.
Dave Van Horn spoke earlier this week. We got to talk to him for the first time and I could talk about it on the podcast for the first time about Shogo Meuchi.
I actually wrote this story from a resort out in south or published it from. I wrote it in Fayetteville. I published it from a resort out in South Carolina last week.
I had known this was coming and I had talked to him and it was just kind of a, hey, we need to wait until some things are finalized here before, you know, before.
Before it's finalized. I guess, for lack of a better term.
Very interesting pitcher. 6 foot 5, 207 pounds. First Japanese born player to ever sign with an SEC program out of high school. Now Kenny Ichikawa just played at Georgia this year, but he began his career at Seattle and he wasn't born in Japan. He was actually born in Honolulu and then played high school baseball in Japan.
But you know, Dave Van Horn said, you know, basically said kind of real intriguing player, Shogo Miuchi.
You know there's going to be a language barrier there that they've got to, as he said, they've got to learn how to, you know, communicate with him. But this has been pretty fascinating, the signing of Shogo and boy, people are really interested in it. Baseball coverage or baseball interest. Interest in baseball coverage is really high here. It's been really, really high in the Shogo story.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I know you were watching like Japanese baseball broadcast with the cat, like the translated captions on and stuff. So you can get some of that
[00:33:41] Speaker A: when you're in Tokyo. There's a 14 hour time zone difference between here and Tokyo. And so when I was communicating with Shogo and with a contact that he has there in Tokyo, it was a lot of late Night calls. Either late night for me or. Or late night for them. Because there's not a lot of times during the day where you're working and they're working at the same time.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: I feel like you were on the phone with Japan or something in Japan all the time. And you were also. It was just funny to see you.
You'd send posts that are all in Japanese and I'd have to click the See translation button every single time just to try and figure out what it was about.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: I found a story about Shogo that his agenc posted yesterday. And it's a three page. Like, like this is old school where you get to the bottom of an Internet page and you click on page two. Click on page three. It's three pages of that.
The whole thing is in Japanese. And I'm going to figure out a way to read this story. I just haven't figured out a way to do it yet. But that came out yesterday.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: How exciting though for. I think it's just like it's. It's going to be fun. Like we know how good some.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: So much if nothing else. There's so much intrigue about this guy.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: I mean baseball and softball too, even in Japan is a big deal. Huge. It's.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Somebody put this way to me, high school baseball in Japan is like high school football in Texas.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Let that sink in for a second. Like, like this guy, he was in middle school. Ninth grade is middle school in his city. As a ninth grader in middle school he struck out. Rentaro Sasaki, who is the all time home run leader in Japan. High school baseball. He just signed with the Marlins this week or last week.
He played at Stanford for a couple of years. Like he struck him out swinging as a middle schooler and it got everybody's attention and he's been on the radar ever since then.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: I'm excited to see what the hog pin does with this because they've had some fun in recent years. You know, between. I've seen some kangaroos for Australia. I've seen a lot of Hawaiian stuff. I just think that they're going to have a lot of fun with this and it'll be fun. I. It's crazy that we sit here and like baseball is just such a year round thing as far as I know that a lot of players have been playing, you know, summer ball and then it's July 31st, we're going to turn around and it's going to be fall ball in like a couple months.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: September 9th, the first day of fall ball.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: And it's just. It's just crazy how it has developed into such a just a year round. Like you have to monitor everything, especially just with the nature of the draft. And with like that you have transfer interests who are getting drafted and your roster is like Johnny Gomez. You're having to add guys like him because of what happens with the draft. It just. It's such moving pieces and it's crazy to see how these coaches like a Dave Van Horn have adapted with the way that the sport has changed. Because it is totally different now, I would assume, to navigate July than it was 15 years ago, no doubt.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: Five years ago, Van Horn said of Shogo, he said, quote, he's big, he's young, and he'll get better here. He said, we just have to learn how to communicate a little bit and that'll be something we'll really work on. We got a few things up our sleeve there.
[00:37:06] Speaker B: I liked that comment when I heard him say that. I'm like, what are the things up your sleeve?
[00:37:10] Speaker A: Yeah, fall exhibitions. He said Arkansas is going to play four fall exhibitions this year. You know, they've only been able to play two in the past, incidentally. Changed that to where you can play four now. He didn't say who they were again. This is one of those things where I don't think things are totally finalized, he said. They've got three teams that are kind of committed to play them. All of the games are going to be at bomb, he said. Maybe a couple of in state teams, maybe a Texas school.
You know, they played Little Rock in fall exhibitions quite a bit. I would think that that would be, you know, a pretty high potential that they would play Little Rock again, especially given the ties between those coaching staffs. But we'll find that out here pretty soon.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: I have a question about all this draft stuff that I'm glad I get to ask you. It seems to me, as someone who's not always in the weeds with this in the summer with the draft and everything, that they get absolutely killed with high school prospects, at least in the past. That's how I viewed. I'm like, oh, there's another really highly ranked high school player who.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: That happens a lot.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: How did this like, it seems like that didn't really happen this year.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: I think they had a lot of players. I mean, they could have had a lot of players signed or drafted and potentially signed. They had a lot of players who stuck to their number.
That's really what it boils down to. They had a lot of players who Said to get me to sign professional baseball, it's going to take X amount of dollars.
And when the team started calling during the draft, you know, they didn't want to, you know, I mean, I'm just using hypothetical numbers here. You know, they didn't offer a million dollars, they offered 500,000 and players didn't bite.
And you know, I've said this before, I think with high school baseball or just baseball in general, what we're seeing with the MLB draft is less of a, an emphasis on signing high school players. There are only like 124, I think high school players signed this year or drafted this year out of 620 or so picks. And so it was a really low year for high school. But it keeps, it keeps getting lower every year. It feels like, you know, a year or two. When Vijiva got drafted, there was a run on high school shortstops that year in the first round. Well, that wasn't the case this year. And it just seems like what we've seen more often than not in the draft is that teams are really valuing college players who have been developed for one or more years in a big time program. You know, maybe it's a guy like Daniel Jackson who he starts out somewhere and then he transfers into Georgia and he gets, you know, developed there or Behiva Aloys is a great example of this.
But and I think too, you know, players can make money now in college baseball. Like if you're a really. And especially if you're at a place like Arkansas or LSU or A and M or Mississippi State where baseball is a really big deal, you can go there and you've got some star power inside that town, inside that state. And so you can go there and make some money.
And it's not like kind of an all or nothing type deal anymore. You get full scholarships now in baseball. Not everybody's got full scholarships, but a lot of players do have full scholarships. And so everything's just changed a lot to where I feel like it is. It is more unless you're just a really top end player, it's almost more beneficial for you, I think, to go to college now than it is to take the pro money right out of high school.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: It just jumped off the page to me when I was seeing these Arkansas, like who was getting picked by Arkansas. Like I'm so used to seeing so many.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: I don't think it's a deal, Ethan, where they, they had a bad signing class because you know, baseball America, they re ranked the signing classes after the draft, they've got Arkansas as the 9th best signing class in the country and I think they were 14th before the draft. So it's not like, you know, the very best class. But I've seen times where Arkansas had, you know, the quote unquote, very best class and most of the players didn't pan out. And I say this all the time. Well, they had a class in 2015 that was ranked like the 46th best class out of high school.
It had Kevin Copps and Blaine Knight and Isaiah Campbell and Grant Cook. And you know, I mean you go on down the line of a lot of guys who were really good and helped, you know, Arkansas to some really great seasons.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: And I'm just sitting here, sitting here thinking I would rather have the ninth best high school signing class with a lot of guys you get on campus than you sign the number one class and then you lose them all. It's like by the end of that, what is your class?
[00:41:27] Speaker A: Teams that got hammered.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it seems to me I'm just, I'm more intrigued that I just feel like you're going to get to see these freshmen that they actually recruited.
I'm so used to like if I see that they were signed a really big name freshman that you aren't ever going to actually see them in college.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: Talk about projectable and freshman. Judah Ota. That's a name that I think is worth really watching. He's a big outfielder from Honolulu. Of course they've had some success with the Hawaiian born players.
Boy, you look at him and you think he's only 18 years old.
Imagine what that guy could be like in two years after going through strength and conditioning. He's got a really sweet looking swing from the left side.
I think there's a lot of projectability there with him. We'll get out here on this. Ethan mentioned this a second ago. They got a late Portal pop yesterday from Johnny Gomez.
He also goes by. I asked him, I talked to him on the phone.
He's listed on Fairleigh Dickinson's website as Jonathan Gomez.
His social media has Johnny Gomez. I said, what do you prefer? He said, either's fine. So we went with Johnny. He's a 6 foot, 210 pound infielder. He grew up in the Fort Lauderdale area.
Played for two years at Fairleigh Dickinson in New Jersey. 64 analytics has him ranked the number 177 transfer in this year's Portal cycle. He was committed to Stetson. Stetson's in Florida about three hours from his home.
He was looking to get back closer to home. And then Stetson had a head coaching change.
Steve Tremper, who was their head coach, who came here this year and went 2, 2 in Fayetteville. He retired after the season ended. Kind of a little way after the season ended, too.
And so all of the players who were in Stetson's orbit, they got to go into the portal.
Gomez went back into the portal. And, you know, as he, as he kind of alluded to me, staying at home, maybe not as important when you have an opportunity to go to a place like Arkansas.
Player development is a big deal to him.
He said that, you know, he's obviously seen that from the Razorbacks. So they get Johnny Gomez an infielder. I don't know if this guy's a starter.
I don't know if he's a depth piece. Maybe, maybe he ends up being both. We'll see. But you look at his numbers, and this is not in a very strong conference, mind you, but.376 this year from the right side, 10 home runs, 21 doubles. That was the school record, 51 RBI. He was their leadoff hitter. He drew 37 walks. And this is the part that I love, Ethan. He was hit by a pitch 21 times. I asked him about this, and he said that their head coach at Fairleigh Dickinson would get mad if you got out of the way of pitches. They actually would give helmet patches, helmet stickers for guys who would get plunked by pitches. And so that was kind of like a badge of honor for them there. And so, you know, I mean, asking about competition, I said, you're coming into a, you know, a team here at Arkansas that's got a lot of infielders. He said, I'm not afraid of competition. He said, you got to work to get better.
Really liked, you know, what I, what I heard from him yesterday, you know, seems like a guy that's going to come in and work hard and, and those are the type of players that I think have really defined Arkansas success through the years.
[00:44:38] Speaker B: I'm so curious now, with five year eligibility, a guy like this too, because, like, he's a rising junior, does that mean he's entering his fourth year?
[00:44:44] Speaker A: He's entering his third year. He's got three years left.
[00:44:47] Speaker B: I'm about to say, what are we going to start calling these players?
[00:44:50] Speaker A: You know, this could be like, this could be our legacy. We could come up with a term for a fifth year player and it could just catch on like wildfire.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: And grandpa needs to be the Last year we've got a rising grandpa.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: Oh, no. That's quite the leap from senior to grandpa.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: Well, all I know is it's gonna confuse me a lot moving forward with a lot of these sports because just having to reorient in my brain what you're these players kind of are. It's like what used to be a sophomore right now as a freshman. And that's on, like, sorta. Sorta.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: I guess it's. I guess it's. However you look at it. See, I still see it. Freshman year one, sophomore, year two, junior, senior. We got to come up with a term for year five.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's just weird because I view with, like, bringing it back to basketball, these guys who reclassified and coming in, I'm like, oh, this is almost like your development year for your actual freshman year. But I know it's going to be their sophomore year. It's just. It's just weird to me. I. We need terms. I need terms. I think the easiest way to do it is if they'll just list.
Honestly give you a number you're in. Year one, year two, year three, year four, year five.
I think that's the easiest, actually.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: Gomez played shortstop at Fairleigh Dickinson. He was actually a Brooks Wallace Award semifinalist for the best shortstop in the country.
I think there's about 15 or 20 of those.
But he played at the Cape Cod League this summer, and there he also played second base and third base. He said that he's got some experience playing all of those positions at various ages growing up, and he's comfortable at pretty much any position in the infield except for first base, which he hasn't played before. So there's some. This. This. Again, if it's just a depth piece, it's still a big piece because this is somebody who can kind of plug in. And, you know, I mean, the next baseball season, I see that you don't have injuries somewhere that affect you or something that affects you will be the first one I've seen. And so even if this is a guy that goes on the bench, this is still, like, there's still so much value in having strong pieces on the bench. I think Arkansas has done a good job this year of going out and getting a lot of position players to where they're not.
I don't think there's going to be the talent discrepancy between Arkansas's position players next year that there was between Arkansas and some of the teams they played this year. There's going to be a lot of depth on their bench, it feels like.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: And I think in the SEC particularly, you are as strong, you're as good as your depth is a lot of the time as far as, like, because every team's one injury away from, you got to turn to somebody else. And if this is like, you know, this is a guy who is a really good depth piece, it seems like if he is that if he isn't
[00:47:29] Speaker A: a starter, we'll see how he translates to SEC play. That's always the big question when you got a guy that comes from a conference like this. I mean, this is a low major conference. This isn't even a mid major conference. I think I read the other day or yesterday that the Northeast Conference, the conference that he came from, was the lowest rated conference in terms of, you know, strength of teams in the country last year. Like even below the SWAC and the miac where, you know, typically, you know, the teams that get out of there, they get hammered in the NCAA tournament.
But, you know, we'll see.
We'll see.
Man, you bet. 376. I don't care where that is. I feel like there's something, there's something there that tells me that it can, it can transfer to, to an extent. To an extent.
[00:48:16] Speaker B: And then especially, I mean the ranking that he got from 64 Analytics, I think they use a lot of numbers that can kind of put things on scale. Yeah, it's not always like they take into account the conference you played in.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: So Arkansas has got 42 players in the fold right now for fall ball. Dave Van Horn said earlier this week, that's, that's a good number. You know, they want to have a lot of players that they can at least go through fall ball and you know, scrimmage and things like that. So this gives them 42. Will they have another? We'll see. But for sure, the, the roster building portion of the off season is just about over. It began on June 1st with the portal opening here we are on July 31st.
School starts in two weeks, two and a half weeks.
Just about. They've just about got that roster in place for the 2027 season. We appreciate you being here. We're going to have basketball coverage at our website, maybe some baseball stuff too. We'll see over the weekend@whole hogsports.com Anthony Christensen is down in the Bahamas. So we're going to have plenty of coverage from these exhibition games that the Razorbacks are going to play there in the Bahamas. Hope that we'll see you there or next time on our podcast. Have a great weekend, everybody.
