re: We need to get this Mizzou fan to start posting on the SECRant...

quote:

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I know the history exists, I was trying to say most Arkansas fans don't think of it unless someone were to bring it up. I think out of conference basketball attention is mostly pointed at Texas and OU, at least in my experience. I think when Arkansas fans think about Nolan's days, it is mostly focused on the tournament and not the regular seasons.

I do understand the history. My mother in law (we don't get to pick 'em, smh) is a HUGE MU basketball fan and we talk about it at length. Those old Arkansas-MU series just seem too far on the periphery for the casual fan.

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I imagine this is as close to amicable discussion on this as we will get. Fact is, the original post I made about Mizzou-Arky was kinda saying the same thing - I said that basically nothing about our series, past or future, would even come close to the focus and interest that the Mizzou-kansas rivalry had for us, and you are kinda saying same about Arky in terms of your remembrance of Mizzou not being on the level of other games such as Texas or OU.

And I said we had a "nice little history" with you in hoops, and I think your whole take is sort of in keeping with the adjectives "nice" and "little" that I used for it. And you are kind of more the casual fan on hoops and that's fine, I'm definitely hardcore on the history side. Your mother-in-law may be a huge Mizzou fan but I don't think you've had to deal with retorts this detailed from her.

I think when you dropped your smack talk about one particular Mizzou-Arky game (120-68), you didn't (as you mention) really know or remember much more about Mizzou-Arky hoops so you just assumed that was emblematic of the series as a whole and the status of the two programs as a whole both in the '90s and overall, and that was where you kinda made a mistake...which was compounded by me turning out to be a college hoops history nut who can rattle off stats and games at you all over the place. But I think the point I'm trying to make in response to your initial smack talk is that, although neither fanbase views Mizzou-Arky basketball series history as the end-all be-all, from a pure objective basketball perspective it has had some nice, good games and matchups over the years. And it was not just due to good Arkansas teams with Mizzou always sucking, which again as a casual fan is something you seem to have kind of assumed and got blindsided a bit when I trotted out all the numbers about you having lost 5 straight at home to us prior to 120-68 and so forth. In the late 80s and early 1990s our series was a nice, solid one on the college hoops landscape, with both teams generally being Top 25 ranked, 20+ win, NCAA tournament calibre teams year in and year out. Mizzou's program flamed out in the latter part of the 1990s, and then Arky's program flamed out in latter part of Nolan's career and thereafter. But for a good six or seven year stretch there in the late 80s/90s, our schools had a "nice little series" going that was always nationally televised and noticed in college basketball circles.