Eric Musselman reveals his goals from upcoming European Tour

Eric Musselman’s Arkansas hoops team heads to Spain and Italy next month for an 11-day trip where they’ll play four exhibition games as part of a foreign tour. A privilege afforded to college programs every four years — to get to go on the road, outside the country, and test their team a few months before the actual season starts.

So Hogs fans are excited to get to see this likely top-15-ranked Arkansas team stretch its legs against some European competition before the season starts in November. As is Eric Musselman, who answered questions about the upcoming trip in a recent press conference.

The Hogs’ headman, when asked about the benefits of such a trip, parroted the common remark about such trips. “Everybody says culture and getting to know each other. And I think that’s all true.”

However, he warned folks not to take too much away from such a small sample of games, then brought up one example of how one of his guards, Kendall Stephens, at Nevada struggled mightily during the team’s foreign tour back in 2017, but wound up developing into a historic shooter.

“I still share a a little quick story with what I did with our team the other day and I put the graphic up. Kendall Stephens was 0-for-Costa Rica — I think he was 0-16 from three. I’ll never forget, everybody was dressed, it was right after a game, and the only place we could meet was in a shower. We were all in there and I asked Kendall whether he was ever going to make a three-point shot in a Nevada Wolf Pack uniform. And he went out and broke Jimmer Fredette’s record and was the all-time leading [single season three-point] scorer in the history of that conference. And I didn’t know if he was ever going to make a three.”

So no reason to panic if a player or two struggles, or overreact if another player can’t miss a shot. It’s only a handful of games.

But Musselman did explain that playing the games does help further iron out his team and their identity.

“It’s also is just one piece to a long puzzle leading up to November. Then that puzzle continues to evolve in January and February.”

“So when you’re in a hotel room and you’re eating together you do get to know each other. But we’ve done plenty of exercises pre/post-practice that we kind of do know each other. But it’ll give us some chemistry, it’ll give us another body of work going against different people. We chart everything now — how rotations play out. We’ll have a whole body of work of statistics. We have film to share with people, This is another piece to all of that as well.”

Eric Musselman continued, emphasizing the team atmosphere being created.

“Is the trip important? Absolutely. It’s important for a lot of things. It’s important for the families, the wives that sacrifice, us being away all the time. For them to feel a part of a long extended road trip out of the country. Academics gets to go with us. Strength coach and nutritionist, so there’s a lot of people that are going to be a part of this thing. It’s our whole family kind of going on this thing, which is not always how we travel.”