Arkansas hoops lost in the SEC Tournament on Friday to Texas A&M, which meant another series of outbursts from Razorbacks head coach Eric Musselman. The 58-year-old head of the Hogs tends to blow up during games. He typically saves his best material for the referees and will bombard them with every curse word in the book when calls start to go against his team.
The loss vs. Texas A&M was no exception. Arkansas actually led for most of the game and was even up by 13 late in the first half. But A&M slowly ate into that lead and eventually flipped the script in the second half to take the lead for good and squeeze out the Razorbacks to send them back to Fayetteville. Of course, Eric Musselman didn’t go quietly into that good Friday night, despite his assistant coach’s best attempt (more on this in a minute).
As Arkansas stampeded off the floor following the loss, Musselman reportedly serenaded Bridgestone Arena with f-bombs and various other foul phrases before disappearing into the tunnel. While Musselman hooped and hollered on his way to the locker room, Kentucky journalism student Jack Weaver (of the student-run paper the Kentucky Kernel) videoed his walk back but was abruptly stopped when an Arkansas assistant grabbed Jack’s phone and threw it on the ground to prevent any further taping of Musselman’s tantrum.
See below:
Arkansas assistant grabs student-journalist’s phone and throws it to the ground
All you can see is Musselman stalking off the court while ripping up whatever piece of paper was in his hand. Then, after one side-eye glance at Jack from Muss, one of the Razorback assistants yipped “Hey” and proceeded to grab his phone and spike it into the concrete.
Replies to Jack’s tweet claimed that the man who threw the phone was the Arkansas Video Coordinator. C’mon man, you can’t be mistreating one of your own, a fellow video-taper who was just trying to share Coach Musselman’s rampage with all of Twitter.
Just a terrible look for Arkansas and especially that coach. It’s unclear if Musselman had anything to do with his actions. He certainly didn’t command the assistant coach to take Jack’s phone in the video that we can see. So maybe he did reprimand that coach afterward for actively trying to destroy another person’s property. If not, then he should. And if Musselman didn’t, then the SEC might step in and punish him.
The Kernel themselves even issued a statement on Jack’s behalf, writing on Twitter:
“The Kentucky Kernel is appalled by the actions of the Arkansas mens basketball program. Jack Weaver always embodies professionalism on the job and no journalist, especially a student journalist, should be subjected to violence for simply doing their job.”
The Kernel is right. In no scenario is that level of aggression or the mis-treatment of someone else’s personal items acceptable. Simply inexcusable behavior from a representative of Arkansas.