Everything You Never Knew About Rogers State

Hogs’ opponent Monday night didn't even have athletics until 2000

Kent Smith | Oct 21, 2022

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Arkansas Razorbacks

If you’re like a lot of Arkansas fans, when it was announced that the men’s basketball team would be playing an exhibition game against Rogers State to technically open the 2022-23 season, you probably asked the same thing we asked at the allHogs.com office — ”Wait, they’re playing Rogers High School?”

It’s not an unreasonable thought because:

Arkansas has played high school teams in the past, although it’s been a while.
It’s an exhibition game.
Even though it would be an exhibition against a high school team, Eric Musselman would not only find a way to get something out of it, he would do all he could to convince the fan base the Hogs had just faced the equivalent of a combination of Duke and Gonzaga, a Gonzaguke Bull Devil team if you will.
No one we have come across has ever heard of Rogers State.

As it turns out Rogers State is a Division II team in Oklahoma.

This was a shock to yours truly as I covered Division II from Oklahoma-Texas all the way to Florida in my early days as a sports reporter before many of our readers were born and never once did I cross paths or hear of Rogers State.

I even drive across Oklahoma on a regular basis and have seen hide nor hair of such a university.

It turns out, Rogers State is southeast of Disney next to Soldier Field.

The locals probably have a good time with that location description if they’ve scoured a map and put it together.

It’s actually not that far from Fayetteville. I’d venture to guess Sam Pittman drove near it at some point during his former life in Grove, Oklahoma.

For those who are a little lost, the school is northeast of Tulsa in a town called Claremore and there’s a very good reason their stadium carries the same name as the stadium the Chicago Bears played in during the days of famed Razorback Dan Hampton.

Before the path was laid to eventually become the current university, Rogers State was Oklahoma Military Academy.

Students were able to get their secondary degree and complete their first two years of college. It stayed this way for 60 years before it transitioned into Claremore Junior College.

That lasted 11 years until, in 1982, it had grown from roughly 400 students to over 3,000 students and was designated Rogers State College.

It also became home to Oklahoma’s only full-power public television station.

In 2000, Rogers State became fully accredited as a university.

The reason most Arkansas fans have never heard of Rogers State University is because it didn’t launch an athletics program until 2005. At that point it slowly added 10 sports over the next five years as part of the NAIA.

Finally, in 2016, Rogers State athletics, sporting the Hillcat mascot representing a mythical blue and crimson cousin of a bobcat, the university was granted full Division II status as a member of the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association.

The Hillcats are known for softball, having recently won a Division II national championship in Denver.

As for the basketball team, the Hillcats kicked off their status as a Division II team in dramatic fashion. RSU nearly knocked off Oklahoma State to begin 2019, and then built a 24-6 record before the Hillcats’ season was canceled by covid.

The following year saw a massive dropoff as the team fell below .500. The Hillcats rebounded with a winning record last season in an up and down year that began with a 49-point loss to Oklahoma.

One thing that is for certain is the roster will be as unfamiliar to Arkansas fans as the team itself.

The school’s proximity to Arkansas and the depth of quality basketball in the state would make the odds seem high that a player from the natural state may have snuck onto the roster, but that isn’t the case.

Instead the list is peppered with unlikely locales such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, Australia, Wisconsin and St. Martin’s.

Apparently the rest of the world has at least heard of Rogers State University.

Just not the good people of Arkansas.