Random Musings About Patrick Beverley

Warning: this post contains enough rampant speculation and uninformed commentary to make Buzz Bissinger’s head explode.

As Stephen noted yesterday, Patrick Beverley is out for the season and that definitely “kinda sucks“. That alone is certainly bad enough news (interesting that both the football and basketball teams are now entirely in rebuilding mode), but it seems like there’s a larger issue out there going undiscussed: will Beverley ever don a Razorback uniform again?

After a stellar freshman season, Beverley’s performance was a bit disappointing last year. Maybe it was a garden variety sophomore slump, but reading between the lines it’s easy to speculate that things were never quite right between him and John Pelphrey. I have no idea what they would have clashed about or why, but the fact that Beverley gave serious thought to transferring to South Florida (and Stan Heath) after the season indicates that something was amiss in that relationship.

As for the actual announcement that he won’t be playing next year, it seems a little fishy. Totally absent the usual language about academics or the ubiquitous “violation of team rules” it certainly raises more questions than it answers…one would think that if the reason for his not playing were one of those garden-variety issues we’d know more about it.

So, given all the various factors at play, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that Patrick Beverley has played his last game as a Hog. You can take some comfort in the fact that I’m often wrong, but that’s how I’m seeing it. What do you think? I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts in the comments section.