Eric Musselman: “(Feels) Like someone’s taken a nail to a certain spot on my shoulder”

Arkansas coach Eric Musselman wasn’t going to do it anymore. He wanted off the pain medication and he missed his team.

Tuesday night, the Head Hog was back on the Arkansas bench. Musselman and the Arkansas medical staff were planning on him missing between two and six games following shoulder surgery. He was – and is – still aching after Razorbacks forward Trey Wade crashed into him in early December.

But enough was enough.

“Saturday was the worst day I’ve ever had,” Musselman said of the day he felt physically miserable during Arkansas’ win at LSU when assistant coach Keith Smart served as interim head coach. “Just made a decision, being off the pain medication was going to determine how quickly I came back.”

Musselman wasn’t as animated on the sideline as usual. He sat a couple feet back from the rest of the bench next to the scorer’s table. Most of the time, he propped his right arm up on the table and avoided being hit. Again. Every so often, he would rise and pace the sideline, barking orders at his players during Arkansas’ 75-59 win over South Carolina on Tuesday.

Between wanting to keep the pain medication habit, the pain he was going to go through regardless and his desire to be back with his crew, he ditched the meds and put his spurs on, so to speak.

Saturday was atrocious.

“I was just throwing up all day. Needed two IVs. Never had felt like that at all. I felt bad,” he said.

Things were worse when the medication wasn’t kicking in, he said. So to speed up the withdrawal process, he stopped, cleared his return with team doctors and made a surprise return to the bench for Arkansas’ third straight win.

As for how he felt during the press conference after, well, still rough.

“Like someone’s taken a nail to a certain spot in my shoulder,” he said. “But it’s OK. It’s been like that since December 2. It doesn’t feel any worse, any better than it did the day Trey ran into me.”