Seventh Heaven: Mike Neighbors Ready to Take Hogs to Moon

Now in his seventh year, he's ready to launch program to new heights with new focus

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A moon stress ball comes flying each reporter's way before the press conference even starts. Now in his seventh season as Arkansas coach Mike Neighbors thinks he finally has the path to get the Razorbacks their first tournament win in nearly a decade. They last won a tournament game in 2015, under Jimmy Dykes and missed it last year. 

Those efforts took a hit Tuesday, with the announcement Jersey Wolfenbarger is no longer part of the program. The Fort Smith native was the No. 7 overall prospect of her draft class, according to ESPN. 

"This is my failure," Neighbors said. "When I recruited Jersey, We did it on a 10-year plan. I think that's what made us different than everybody else that was recruiting her. She wanted to be a WNBA player.  It was my plan and I was trying to execute it the best I could. We were two years into it and I was trying to help her get to where when she got to the WNBA she'd be able to do the things she wanted to do. Quite frankly, I failed in that. It's just a case where not all of them work." 

Neighbors remains hopeful the season will be a success with his increased versatility and depth, combined with a space-themed motto. He borrowed it from fellow SEC coach Buzz Williams at Texas A&M.

"I saw him do a talk about if you start off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., one degree off you'll miss the moon by 4,167 miles or something," Neighbors said. "The thought was if you start on the wrong path and you stay on that wrong path, you end up missing. We used that as our first talk in the preseason and we made it our own."

Now without Wolfenbarger, the team will try and stay on the right path for as long as they can with a healthy mix of newcomers and returners. The team features four freshmen, five sophomores, three juniors and one graduate. 

"e can really isolate matchups," Neighbors said. "We're able to press full court. We're able to play as fast as we've played since we've been here." 

Two standouts on the team figure to be graduate Mikayla Daniels and Sasha Golforth. Daniels is back after averaging 13.2 points per game in 34 starts. Golforth, a Fayetteville graduate, is back after sitting out all of last season. She averaged 11.5 points in 32 games in the 2021-22 campaign. 

"I've been waiting for the first game for a while," Golforth said. "Everyone works really hard together. I would like to be named first-team defense All-SEC."

Neighbors hopes another year of the team playing together combined with a successful foreign three-game exhibition summer trip will set the team up for success. 

"Everybody wants to focus on what we lost and not what we got," Neighbors said. "I think after those three games over there, Cristina shows up and everybody is like 'Hmmm.', so our depth got even deeper. It was already going to be a deep rotation."

Cristina Sanchez Cerquira comes in with quite the pedigree. She played professional baseball for Segle XXI in her native Spain for the past two seasons, averaging 6.4 points last year.

Sanchez and the rest of the team tip off 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7, inside Bud Walton Arena against Louisiana-Monroe. The game will be streamed on SEC Network+.

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