WholeHogSports · Apr 5, 2020
State of the Hogs: Defense made Eddie Sutton great
From left: Eddie Sutton, Pat Foster and Gene Keady participate in a panel at the Little Rock Tip-Off Club on March 29, 2010. Asked to define the essence of what made Eddie Sutton a hall of fame coach, James Dickey quoted the late Charlie Spoonhour.
Spoonhour, a Rogers High School graduate, fielded a call from Dickey, then an assistant for Sutton at Arkansas in the early 1980s. Dickey was instructed to try to get Spoonhour’s new school, Southwest Missouri State, on the UA schedule.
“I think Charlie had just gotten there and Coach Sutton wanted to know if they would consider coming down to play us in a series,” Dickey said. “I called him and it wasn’t going well. He didn’t want to play us.