Hogs Must Decide if They Want to Be Another Name on List or Champions

When I was in my sophomore year of high school, Arkansas was set to take on Kentucky in the SEC for the first time.

Also, that day. for the first time, I got to taste my grandmother's buttermilk chicken recipe, which was a tad more complex than the name lets on, but not much more. A giant serving dish full of chicken finished just in time for the game to start and it didn't take long to establish two things:

1) This was the most amazing food I ever put in my mouth.

2) So long as I was munching away, savoring the goodness handed down to that table directly by the hand of God apparently, the Razorbacks were having their way with Kentucky in Rupp Arena. The second I stopped eating or ran out on my plate, the Wildcats went on a run.

That day I wore a track in the carpet going from the couch to the kitchen, taking one on behalf if the family as I forced myself to continue to enjoy greatness so the Hogs wouldn't lose. In the end, Arkansas won, 105-88, and I went home to enjoy the world's happiest sleep coma.

From then on, her chicken was dubbed "Lucky Chicken" and I begged her to make it any time I was down there to watch a game. Nolan Richardson's Razorbacks never lost a single time when she whipped up a pile of her special chicken.

Look back at the first four games between Arkansas and Kentucky in the SEC and it will be easy to see when the one time was I didn't go to her house to watch it.

In 1996 I left for college having regretfully not learned how to make her chicken. Not long after, she came down with cancer and passed away.

I never tried to replicate her recipe, instead coming up with my own set of herbs and spices that my children prefer over the various restaurant fried chickens we have bought over the years. However, it's clearly not as lucky, hence the dark ages of Arkansas basketball before Musselman showed up.

So, with no plate of Lucky Chicken coming to save their bacon, how are these Razorbacks going to create their own legacy?

Well, the short of it is, they aren't. Not unless they undergo a significant change.

Right now this plays like a team full of players satisfied with simply adding their names to John Calipari's infamous NBA Draft sheet rather than men who want to establish a legacy and become legends. If all that matters is getting to the League and getting a check, then that doesn't require quite as much work.

For a few of these guys, the work is already done. But if they want to know what it feels like to go on a magical run in front of the world throughout March and bask in the glory of becoming champions, there is much work to be done.

If they want their names to be remembered forever alongside other legends like Corliss Williamson, Scotty Thurmond, Corey Beck, Alex Dillard, Clint McDaniel and all the others Arkansas fans can rip off without thought, that requires much more than is needed to make Calipari's list.

That means being relentless about practicing free throws. It means studying old tape of Dennis Rodman from his time with the Bulls and becoming obsessive about gathering rebounds.

It requires a fearlessness when driving the basket while ensuring quality contact will take place. It requires a few extra reps on the weights to be solid enough to get a quality shot off when the contract does come.

It also means suffering through extra conditioning so you can turn up the heat defensively late in games when your opponents are getting tired. That's how champions are made.

That's how teams overcome cold starts and bad shooting days overall. Create contact and get to the line while forcing opponents to back off and get in their heads while the fouls pile up.

Slowly stretch leads or trim deficits from the line. Get second chance after second chance through rebounding, mentally wearing out your opponent.

Keep their possessions and opportunities in short supply by doing the same on the other end and watch them panic under the pressure of needing to hit each shot.

Then cut off oxygen to their brains. Make it feel like they are playing eight Razorbacks at once in the final 10 minutes of the game as their body betrays them. It's mentally breaking.

Just go watch any Arkansas game from 1993-95 and see. But all that effort to become a champion, a legend, requires a slight change in body and a massive overhaul in mind and spirit.

It takes so much more to become national champions. It's requires so much, a lot of young men don't want it. That's not their goal.

They don't want to be legends. They just want to be on their own coach's list of guys who went to the NBA so he can use them to lure the next guy in who doesn't truly want it.

So, where do the current players stand? If it's just being on a list, then they should keep doing what they're doing.

The only thing left to do is not get hurt before the draft.

But if they crave more? If they crave legacy and have that "dawg" in them that makes it hurt terribly to lose to anyone for any reason, then there's a lot of work to do.

There's only five weeks to find the things that are missing and, unfortunately, the world no longer contains any "Lucky Chicken" to guarantee they come out on top.

It's up to them to put in the work on their own.

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