Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

Former Virginia and Xavier head basketball coach Pete Gillen likes two teams from the state of Kentucky to advance to the NCAA Final Four this year: Kentucky, because of the Wildcats "unbelievable" talent, and upset sleeper pick Murray State.

Murray State?

"They can shoot it and they are tough as nails," Gillen said Monday when he was the speaker for the Downtown Tip Off Club at North Little Rock's Chamber of Commerce second-floor conference room.

Gillen would have gone with his former team, Xavier, as that usual unheralded party crasher that nowadays seems to make the Final Four — until the game-ending fight with Cincinnati a few weeks ago that garnered much national derision and seemed to shake the Musketeers' chemistry and led to a handful of suspensions. "They've got to get their act together."

Gillen, who spent 30 years in college basketball, first as an assistant at such stops at Notre Dame with Digger Phelps and then as a head coach at Xavier, Providence and Virginia, is now a TV analyst. UALR assistant coach Joe Kleine was a freshman on the 1981 Fighting Irish team when Gillen was on Phelps' staff.

Also, Gillen told the crowd, the club got a good recommendation from good friend and former Arkansas coach Lanny Van Eman, who spoke to the Tip Off Club last year.

His entertaining Brooklyn Irishman delivery and stories had the crowd rolling Monday at lunch, once they could catch up with his fast-paced delivery.

We first met Gillen nearly 22 years ago, when he brought his Top 20 Xavier team to Little Rock to play Mike Newell's UALR club at Barton Coliseum. Xavier pulled away to win, and both teams would earn spots in the 1990 NCAA Tournament —  Xavier as a No. 3 seed in the Midwest Region, UALR as a 16th seed and quick out against eventual national champion UNLV in the West.

Xavier had Texas down by 12 at the half in the Midwest Regional and blew it in the second half; No. 4 seed Arkansas beat Texas in the regional final to reach the Final Four.

Gillen coached nearly a dozen players who had significant careers in the NBA. The best, he said, was 6-foot-8 Tyrone Hill off that Xavier team.

His best team in his 20 years as a head coach, he said was the 1997 Providence team that reached the Elite Eight and had a shot in regulation to beat Arizona and reach the Final Four. That team featured one of the all-name players in college basketball history, God Shamgod.

"I coached God," he joked Monday. "If you can't win with God, you aren't a very good coach."