Saturday was another big sports day in the state of Arkansas with several good basketball games on tap and more racing at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort.
In anticipation of the Arkansas Razorbacks hosting No. 3 Alabama, Coach John Calipari pleaded for the fans to be nuts.
Calipari has been on both sides of the loud crowd when he was at Kentucky, and was not liked much, to say the least, by many fans in the SEC. They Razorback Nation loves him now that he is wearing the cardinal colors of the UA.
Once at Kentucky, he did get a standing ovation one night when he was ejected from the game.
Last week Alabama Coach Nate Oats may not have realized it at the time, but he was asking for a double dose of Razorback hostility when he declared the most hostile environment in the SEC is at Auburn.
Of course, that’s his arch rival, and the Auburn fans are good, they just are not Razorback good when it comes top shelf crowd noise.
The fans showed up and showed out but couldn’t make a difference in the 90-81 win by the Florida Gators at Auburn on Saturday.
Auburn, the No. 1 team in the nation and along with Alabama is predicted to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, came into the game riding a 14-game win streak.
Their only other loss was to Duke 84-78 on Dec. 4 in Durham, N.C. The Blue Devils are currently the No. 2 team in the Associated Press and coaches polls.
Alabama is No. 3.
Auburn missed nine free throws and made just 7 of 22 three-pointers (31.8%), while the Gators made 15 of 18 free throws and 13 of 33 threes.
The Tigers tried to mount a furious run at the end after trailing by 21 five minutes into the second half.
They got it to 78-87 with 1:26 to play, but Florida got a steal and a layup, and Auburn’s push ended with three free throws.
Florida Coach Todd Golden worked for Auburn’s Bruce Pearl, starting as the operations manager and working his way up to assistant. Their postgame handshake was long and full of friendship.
Florida is ranked No. 6 in the nation as the SEC has five team ranked in the top 10 and four more in the top 25.
What makes this SEC race so compelling is that anyone can win any time. When you are playing teams that are Quad 1 according to the NCAA NET rankings, you always have a chance to help yourself.
Arkansas gets what should be a win this Wednesday when it hosts LSU. But it then gets four heavyweights in a row, going to Texas A&M and Auburn before hosting Missouri and Texas.
The Tigers were 1-8 in the SEC entering Saturday. Their lone win was against the Razorbacks, 78-74 at Baton Rouge.
They were riding a five-game losing streak.
Long before loud, proud crowd in Bud Walton greeted Bama, three SEC teams had lost home games. South Carolina fell to Kentucky, Oklahoma to Tennessee and, of course, Auburn to Florida.
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In Hot Springs on Saturday, a good crowd enjoyed unseasonably nice weather and the usual excellent racing at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort.
The feature race, and the Bayakoa Stakes, a Grade III race for fillies and mares 4 years olds and up, drew a short but intensive field with Loved going off as expected as the 2-5 favorite from the No. 6 hole with Corningstone the second favorite breaking on the rail.
Yet, it was longshot shipper Wild Bout Hilary that went wire-to-wire to grab the winner’s share of the $250,000 purse.
Wild Bout Hilary, ridden by CJ McMahon, vanned in from Fair Grounds for this race and returned $34 on a win ticket. The filly is trained by Tanner Tracy and has won 6 of 13 starts.
