Basketball Schedule On Hold
Wednesday, July 24, 2002

Column By Harry King

Arkansas News Bureau/RazorbackCentral

By the end of the week, University of Arkansas basketball fans should be able to start making plans for must-see games under first-year coach Stan Heath.

The Razorback schedule is complete, but it's on hold because some coaches in the Southeastern Conference have been slow to send in forms approving the league games. The SEC won't release the league schedule until it is certain that conference coaches don't have arena conflicts and that non-conference games are not too close to league games. The SEC also is working out which games will be televised on which networks.

Early in the week, some of the 12 league coaches still had not signed off on the schedule. They were slow to take care of the paper work because they were on the road last week, doing last-minute recruiting prior to the dead period which began Thursday.

The league expects the schedules to be released within a day or two.

Arkansas will have 16 conference games, plus 11 non-conference games. This year, the Razorbacks are not playing in a preseason tournament or a tournament outside the continental United States. Such events do not count against the 28-game quota that includes at least one game in the league tournament.

Although details have not been released, some of the non-conference opponents are obvious:

I'm looking forward to seeing the new and improved coaching style of Stan Heath in action.