Neighbors hopes Arkansas will shake off SEC women’s hoops basement prediction

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

When you are picked to finish 16th in a 16-team league, there’s no where for you to go but up.

That’s exactly where Arkansas was picked in the SEC Women’s Basketball preseason poll – not surprising since five starters jumped into the transfer portal or were out of eligibility.

Razorback head coach Mike Neighbors restocked the cupboard with seven new players, but gets the preseason ranking since only 9 percent of last season’s production returns.

“I don’t like being picked at the bottom,” Neighbors said Wednesday at SEC Media Day .in Birmingham, Ala. “Neither do my players. But I tried to explain to our players yesterday when that hit, it’s not about them. It’s about what we did at the end of last year and who we lost to.

“I think we’re in a good spot about it. You know I coach in reality world. So let’s talk about it. It is an important part to our game. It gets a buzz going, whether it’s positive or negative.

“You have to be able to take the good with the bad. That’s where we’re at right now. We’re solely focused now on making sure we don’t finish there.”

Arkansas will host Northeastern State on Friday at 5 p.m. in an exhibition match-up and then open its regular season on Nov. 4 with visiting Fairfield, who won 30 games last season.

“When we built the schedule, we weren’t anticipating some people to leave the program that we did when we built the schedule a year and a half, two years ago,” Neighbors said. “We’re opening with Fairfield. Some people have called me and said, Have you lost your damn mind opening with Fairfield with a new team?

“Well, I didn’t have a new team when we scheduled it. So yeah, a little bit out of the mind. Fairfield is a team that won 30 games last year. It will be our first (real) game to put on the uniforms on.”

Neighbors understands fans and media love preseason polls, but notes they have not been accurate with even one of his teams.

“Certainly a huge part of what we do in our sport,” Neighbors said of polls. “I’m used to them. I’ve been a part of 32 of them. Have never one time finished where the poll predicted, 0-32 on that.

“We’re going to focus on making sure we don’t finish where we’re predicted.”

Neighbors isn’t aware of any predictors being on hand for his team’s workouts this off season.

“I appreciate everybody that votes in ’em,” Neighbors said. “ I don’t think anybody that voted has been to a practice yet. So I don’t put a lot of stock into it, mainly because, again, we’ve never finished there…We’ve never finished where we were picked.”

Neighbors, who took his Washington team led by WNBA star Kelsey Plum to the Final Four back in 2016, has been to a pair of NCAA Tournaments in his seven years at Arkansas.

He’s been in favor of limited polls in the past.

“I have openly campaigned in the past to only release the top eight in other leagues,” Neighbors said. “We started in the Pac-12. The Big Ten does it.

“It can sometimes hurt the programs that are picked in the bottom because of the perception, and then you have to answer questions to recruits. Not you (the media). We’re fine. Me and you can talk all the time. But I have to answer that question to a recruit.

He fully expects an SEC team to outpace its prediction and be in the NCAA Tournament.

“In our league, I can tell you this, somebody has a double-digit number beside them is going to make the tournament this year,” Neighbors said. “I’ll predict that right now. Somebody who in the preseason poll has a double-digit number beside their name will be in the NCAA tournament. That’s how good the league is.

“And you just added two teams (Texas and Oklahoma) that have been to every NCAA tournament, except for one or two, since I’ve been born.”

Neighbors was asked about landing some many international players – he has ones from six different countries other than the United States – instead of hitting the high school and AAU programs.

“We’re still recruiting (domestically),” Neighbors explained. “We, in fact, have about half and half. The reason I’m embracing international, did anybody else watch the Olympics? They’re catching us, okay? The basketball being played worldwide now is at a much higher level than it was 10, 15 years ago.

“The fact that our men’s and women’s teams are not dominating in the Olympic Games anymore is a little bit of a snapshot of what’s at the younger ages there. We’re trying to beat everybody to that. When it comes to the revenue share, NIL, none of us really know what that is. It’s still to be determined.”

Neighbors also admits he is still learning how to deal with the ever-changing college sports landscape.

“Until I know the rules of the game, I’m going to try to find the best players that fit where we live,” Neighbors said. “With Walmart in our area and all the other great businesses, the international culture is huge. We’ve been successful at attracting kids to Fayetteville, which maybe in the past wouldn’t have been true.”

Last year’s motivational theme involved space, but this season it’s investment into a piggy bank.

“So it’s an investment visual I want them to have,” Neighbors said. “Each of us have one. Thanks to Signature Bank for giving them to us. It’s a plastic piggy bank. Anytime I make a deposit into their banks, now I feel like I can take something out of their banks when I need to.

“When I need to talk to them about going to class, about anything, I’ve got something invested in them. It’s in their bank. I give them a little sheet of paper, fold it up. Sometimes they’re all the same, sometimes they’re personal to that particular player, ways we’ve invested in them.

“I think sometimes you can lose sight about how much investment goes both ways. Until I have invested into them, I’m not going to take any deposits out of them.

“Talking to somebody the other night about coaching these days. All the changes we’ve had, the one thing that stayed really the same, I’m going to coach ’em as hard as I’m going to love ’em. That’s what that bank is going to show ’em.”

Photo courtesy of SEC Sports