If Ernie Murry has adopted a characteristic from his University of Arkansas basketball coach, it’s the attitude that “Don’t nobody outwork me!”
“You’re smarter than me? Maybe that’s true, but you can’t outwork me,” Nolan Richardson said to a full Pine Bluff Convention Center ballroom Thursday night. “You got more degrees than a thermometer … you can’t outwork me. … When I look at Ernie, I know that nobody’s going to outwork him. That’s a very high quality to have.
“Don’t cry. Just work.”
Richardson and many of Murry’s friends gathered to roast and toast a member of Arkansas’ 1990 NCAA Final Four team at a fundraising dinner for Students of Achievement & Responsibility (SOAR), a social enrichment and academic development program for Pine Bluff youths. SOAR, which started from a $1 million grant by the McGeorge family in honor of Pine Bluff Sand and Gravel’s 100th anniversary in 2013, operates at First Methodist Church on Sixth Avenue.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“It’s a great night for SOAR; it’s not about me,” Murry said after the banquet, which also featured a live auction of autographed basketballs, jewelry and other merchandise. “I wanted them to use me, but it’s about helping the kids of Jefferson County.”
Gleefully, the one-time walk-on to Richardson’s program who won two state championships as a player at Wabbaseka High School (1984 and 1986) and played at Mississippi County Community College (present-day Arkansas Northeastern College) was on the receiving end of jokes and words of support from close friends, including Pine Bluff attorney Gene McKissic, Simmons Bank vice president and athletic director Pat Anderson and KeepSakes Jewelry co-founder David Judkins, who seemed to steal the show well before Richardson took the podium.
Judkins said Murry invited him to speak at the banquet, but there was a catch: “It’s going to cost you $1,500 to speak.”
Judkins then asked how others got to be invited, and he said Murry responded: “Well, these are all my friends.” Asking what he was to Murry, Judkins said Murry answered: “You’re my buddy.”
“Well, what makes a buddy different from a friend?” Judkins asked. The friends paid to be at the roasters’ table, Murry supposedly responded.
Arkansas great Joe Kleine and former Arkansas assistant coaches Mike Anderson, Wayne Stehlik and Matt Zimmerman all gave their best quips about Murry, often referring to the time he helped then-No. 3 Arkansas beat the University of Texas 103-96 in a February 1990 national-TV game. Richardson walked off the Austin, Texas, court in protest of an intentional foul called against Lee Mayberry, who eventually scored the game-tying 3-pointer to send the game to overtime.
It was also one of three meetings between the Razorbacks and Longhorns that season, all of which Arkansas won. The third was the regional final in Dallas to qualify for the Final Four.
Mike Anderson, Arkansas’ coach from 2011-19, recalled watching the final game of the 1991 King Cotton Holiday Classic at the Convention Center, when future Hog Corliss Williamson led Russellville High to a championship win over an Alameda, Calif.-based St. Joseph Notre Dame team led by Jason Kidd, who, like Richardson, is a Basketball Hall of Famer.
“We were trying to recruit Jason Kidd,” Anderson said. “Coach and I were standing in a hotel right there in the lobby, and Coach (Richardson) was talking to Jason Kidd’s coach. Jason storms in there and says, ‘Coach, let’s get the hell out of here. They’re cheating us here in Arkansas. Coach Richardson looked at me and said, ‘Coach, we ain’t got a chance with Jason Kidd.’”
Anderson also told how Murry used to claim he was from Pine Bluff rather than Wabbaseka in order to appear he was from a larger city. (Kleine, for his part, quipped Wabbaseka is so small, the city limit sign says: “We missed it.”)
Then Richardson stepped to the mic after leading Arkansas’ Hog Call of “Woo … Pig! Sooie!”
“It is my great pleasure to be here, but I wish Ernie told me what I was coming for,” Richardson said. “The detail of what he wants you to do is left up to you and your mind.”
