Neighbors talks future as Arkansas looks to extend season vs. Georgia at SEC Tournament

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

An Arkansas women’s basketball squad feeling as good about itself as it has in awhile – and also with a coach and star player a little mad – will try to keep its season alive Wednesday at the Bon Secours Wellness Center in Greenville, S.C.

The 13th-seeded Razorbacks (10-21, 3-13) will meet 12th-seed Georgia (12-18, 4-12) at 12:30 p.m. CST in the opening round of the 2025 SEC Tournament.

Both teams are coming off Sunday road wins with Arkansas ending a seven-game losing streak with a 80-71 win at Texas A&M and visiting Georgia upsetting No. 9 Tennessee 72-69.

“I think our kids were excited to come out with the win,” Razorback head coach Mike Neighbors said. “We didn’t want to finish last in the league and we didn’t.

“Now we have come down here and the 12-13 game gives you a much better chance to win than the 16-9 game.

“Everybody is in a good mood. I’m in a good mood. I was walking on the street and got passed by fans, some were positive and some were not. I handled both good, respectively I think.”

Neighbors, 246-154 overall in his head college coaching career, shot down an unsubstantiated report that he was planning to resign at the end of the season.

He is 148-113 in eight season as head coach at Arkansas, which has made the NCAA Tournament in two of those seasons.

“It is not our true fans, it’s a few randoms, but it comes into your world when your friends start believing it,” Neighbors said. “I had texts from people who were trying to talk me out of stepping down.

“I said ‘guys, let me assure you, you have seen my 2-year-old, my 3-year old, right? If y’all can get a place to bet on it, and I know you are not supposed gamble on sports, but let’s gamble on that not being the case.

“It affects our kids. I had to address it, I had to talk to family, I had to talk to a lot of people about it.”

Neighbors notes this team, which was picked to finish last in the SEC 16-team preseason poll has been fun to coach despite the subpar record.

“But this is not BS…this is one of my most enjoyable teams to coach,” Neighbors said. “They are going to say ‘oh, he is just talking,’ but they don’t know me like that.

“This team keeps showing up through adversity, knew what we were dealt with. We have not made an excuse for injuries, NIL. We have not made any excuses and just tied to do the best we could every day.

“And for us not to finish last, that’s how big that game was the other day. We were picked unanimously to finish last and we didn’t finish there. We finished a lot higher than that. It’s now that much higher, but it feels different.”

Neighbors said he has been meeting with Hunter Yurachek, Arkansas’ Director of Athletics sine before the calendar flipped to 2025.

“”…I am exited about the future,” Neighbors said. “I have had on-going discussions with Hunter since about Christmas about the plan on how we are going to track revenue sharing if that comes about after the (NCAA) house case.

“We have had great conversations about the way we are going to do that and they are ready to go into effect as soon as we know what the rules of the game are with the rev share.

“So I am as energized as I have ever been at this point going into this tournament and 10 wins or 20 wins makes no difference.”

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The Arkansas camp was not happy at all bout Razorback senior Izzy Higginbottom not being one of 17 players named to the All-SEC first and second team squads.

That’s even though she leads the nation in total points (742) and free throws made (235) and heads up the SEC and is fifth nationally in scoring average at 23.9 per game.

“I can’t come up with a justifiable reason,” Neighbors said. “They can say we didn’t win enough games. Well, that one doesn’t work if you look at the rest of the team. Maybe the shooting percentages or a second stat…there’s not one, and I’ve tried to look at it as unbiased as I can.”

Neighbors tried to console the Batesville native over the snub.

“I gave her a Papa Neighbors quote first,” Neighbors said. “Which was, ‘It’s better to not get an award that you deserved than to get an award that you didn’t deserve.’ That was the first thing.”

He then told Higginbottom that a similar thing happened to former Razorback star Chelsea Dungee in the 2018-19 season.

“The second thing was to relay a message that the last time we were down here and pissed off about somebody (not making it), she led us to the finals and set an SEC scoring record in doing so,” Neighbors said. “So, let it be motivation.

“Then I tried to make it make sense to her, and I had a really hard time.”

Dungee owns the Arkansas single season record for most points (759), but Higginbottom needs just 18 points to break that mark – even as she has played in a half-dozen less games to this point.

• • •

The two teams met earlier this season with Georgia taking a 62-61 win in Athens on Feb. 9

“We are coming off our best shooting percentage of the year in games,” Neighbors said of his team hitting 13 of 27 3-pointers. “We’ve shot it that well in practice before, but never really taken it to a game.

‘Against Georgia (in the earlier game), they did a really good job of making it really hard for us to get to the rim and the foul line our first game.

“So hopefully some film of better shooting can help us. Our emotions were a lot better coming off a win than coming down here on a long losing streak.”

That was clear at Tuesday practices – one private and one public.

“That is a compounding factor of winning,” Neighbors said. “Everybody is in a great mood. The energy at both practices today was at a high level.

“Everybody is excited to be here. Lot of kids first time to play in this environment, seeing other kids a the hotel.”

Higginbottom had 24 points in her team’s first game against Georgia with the final two coming on a game-tying basket with 15 seconds left.

But the Bulldogs got the win when Asia Avinger’s made the first of two free throws with 1.3 seconds left.

The winner of Wednesday’s game will move on to a Thursday 12:30 contest against the winner of Wednesday battle between ninth seed Tennessee and 16th seed Texas A&M.

Photo courtesy of Razorbacks Communications/Noah Southard