"See this," Nolan Richardson said, showing off a T-shirt stamped NATIONAL CHAMPIONS. "They didn't print it five minutes ago.
"I expected to win the national championship. I would have been disappointed if we hadn't."
Arkansas, and its coach, delivered Monday night. A 3 1/2-minute rally from a 10-point deficit. A decisive three-pointer by Scotty Thurman as the shot clock expired. A 76-72 victory against Duke.
An NCAA title, the Razorbacks' first. Richardson's first.
"One of the greatest feelings I've had," he said after a decades-long wait had ended. And he showed it.
He took the championship trophy from NCAA basketball committee chairman Tom Butters a few minutes after the game, held it aloft and basked in the cheers of Arkansas fans who made their way to the Charlotte Coliseum. Among them: President Clinton.
Confident and comfortable as Richardson might have been, the First Fan was not.
"I was worried the whole week," Clinton said. "I was worried to the very end. They (the Blue Devils) have a terrific team . . . and they play with heart."
They also played with Final Four experience; this was the third championship game for Duke seniors Grant Hill and Antonio Lang. But it was the Razorbacks who played with championship nerve.
A team of devastating, game-turning runs all season, they put another together when they needed it most, down 10 points early in the second half. Thurman hit from the left wing. Corliss Williamson scored inside. And they were off.
Corey Beck's three-point play, a follow by Dwight Stewart and free throws by Williamson and Beck erased the last of the deficit with 13: 37 left.
Three minutes later, a three-pointer by Alex Dillard staked the Razorbacks to a 59-54 lead.
Duke scrambled back. Chris Collins' trey tied it 70-70 with 1: 30 left.
And it was Thurman's turn to step up. An instant before the shot clock expired, he launched a three-pointer over the outstretched hand of Lang. Bull's-eye. Arkansas by three.
"I didn't have any choice," Thurman said, "but to put the shot up."
This night, at least, Thurman, Richardson and the rest of the Razorbacks could rest easy. The respect and attention they said has been so hard to attain - in part because Richardson is black, in part because the school is outside the major-market mainstream - were theirs beyond a doubt.
And likely will stay awhile.
Williamson also is a sophomore. Center Darnell Robinson, who might end up the best of a class of big men that includes North Carolina's Rasheed Wallace, Massachusetts' Marcus Camby and Wisconsin's Rashard Griffith, and Lee Wilson are freshmen.
The Razorbacks return nine of their first 10 players and lose two seniors. One, Roger Crawford, was unavailable for their last four tournament victories because of a broken ankle.
The other, forward Ken Biley, was given a sentimental start against the Blue Devils.
Arkansas starts next season where it ended this one, No. 1 in the polls - barring an unexpected NBA jump by the 6-7, 245-pound Williamson, whose pro stock has rocketed in recent weeks. He led the Razorbacks with 23 points Monday night and was named the Final Four's outstanding player.
He says the NBA is at least a year away, that "there are a lot of things I need to work on as a player before I go to the next level," that he'll return to Arkansas to "do it again."
Fact is, Williamson has played just one full season of college basketball. He sat out six weeks as a freshman because of a foot injury.
Another fact: No player in Richardson's nine seasons has left Arkansas early. The Todd Day-Lee Mayberry-Oliver Miller core of the team that went to the Final Four in 1990 - losing to Duke - returned intact in '91. And in '92.
And Richardson?
He has flirted with the NBA, most recently a year ago with the Atlanta Hawks. But, at age 52, he shows no short-term inclination to leave. Or retire.
"As long as my health holds and we keep getting the kind of kids in our program that we've got, I will continue to coach basketball," he says.
One thing Richardson did Monday night: add an exclamation point to a season dominated at times by racial issues, from the threatened Black Coaches Association boycott in January to his own monologue the afternoon before the championship game on past and current discrimination.
He's only the second African-American coach with a NCAA championship, following Georgetown's John Thompson in 1984.
"It's a badge of honor, I think, for our association," says Drake coach and BCA executive director Rudy Washington. "Nolan's been with us every step of the way, and here he is. . . . It says an awful lot."
Even if the impact is uncertain.
"It won't hurt" an effort to correct what the BCA says are insensitive and often discriminatory NCAA policies and rules, says Southern California coach George Raveling. But "I don't think any of us thinks one of the by-products is going to be a greater sensitivity to equality (in NCAA rules and policies)."
Says Richardson, who was prepared to walk out in protest 2 1/2 months ago, "John Thompson won years ago. Did it change?
"I hope somewhere down the line, history will change a little bit."
