Arkansas Basketball: Muss reveals how he stays ahead of the competition

Arkansas basketball coach Eric Musselman reveals how he’s staying ahead of the competition

In a recent appearance on the nationally syndicated radio program, The Jim Rome Show, Arkansas Basketball coach Eric Musselman shared what he does differently to stay ahead of the competition.

“We were meeting before I jumped on with you,” Musselman said to host Jim Rome and his audience via telephone.

“What are we going to do creative today? What are we going to do different? How do we improve our defense,” he said sharing some of the prompts he gave his assistant coaches earlier that morning.

“Lets call the University of Wyoming today because they do a great job of defending the three and right now we are one of the worst teams in the nation and in the history of basketball defending the three— how do we get an edge and get better? Those are some of the things we talk about,” he said.

As far as some of the public-facing things he does, social media is a big component of how he separates himself— it’s something he didn’t envision himself doing so well or so frequently.

“That word re-invent is so important, not only career wise, but also individually. Like how you continue to evolve and get better,” Muss said.

“I never thought for a minute that I would be so heavily involved in social media. I mean, 10 years ago or 15 years ago, I was labeled as ‘old-school,’ a ‘coach’s coach.'”

“Now,” Musselman said “There’s probably a lot of young coaches sitting there laughing and thinking, does this guy even know x’s and o’s? He’s so into social media.”

“Well, I’m into social media to try and sell out our building, which we have— 20,000,” he said firmly.

Ultimately, Musselman is so successful on social media (he has more Twitter followers than just about any SEC coach besides Kentucky Coach John Calipari) because he knows who his target audience is and how to talk to them.

“My audience is high school kids. If your audience is high school kids, how do you reach them to the best of your ability? So, we are constantly evolving and reinvent and try to become better. The other night I wore a pair of shoes that had all of our signees for the class that’s coming up that’ll be incoming freshman next year. I had their names on the shoes,” the Arkansas head coach said.

Musselman has a goal to standout on the sidelines this year to perhaps get a few extra seconds of airtime on national tv games when playing in front of a new audience or a national audience.

“We’re going to Kansas City for a tournament, so I’ll have that tournament’s logo on some shoes. We’re trying to have a different pair of shoes almost every game. How do we stay ahead of all of our competitors,” Musselman said reaffirming his mantra.

“Last year, it was reincarnating NBA pictures where I put on a uniform with a recruit and we picked a favorite picture that those guys had liked. How do you have fun, how do you evolve, how do you stay ahead of all other 300+ universities?”

The Arkansas Razorbacks are in good hands with Eric Musselman at the helm of this basketball team. He has the team off to a 5-0 start and ranked No. 13 in the latest AP Top 24 college basketball rankings.