The Little Rock Trojans are the athletic teams representing the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The Trojans are a non-football member of the

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. It participates in Division I of the NCAA; the conference's football programs compete in the Football Cham ...

and a wrestling affiliate member of the Pac-12 Conference. The University offers 7 men's and 8 women's varsity sports. Little Rock has Sun Belt rivalries with all the West Division schools (Arkansas State, Louisiana–Monroe, Louisiana–Lafayette, Texas State, and UT Arlington). Little Rock's primary in-state rival is

Arkansas State Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...

. For the 2005–06

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

season, the Trojans moved into the $25 million Jack Stephens Center. This new facility almost doubled the

seating capacity Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available, and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that ...

of the old Little Rock gym, with 5,600 seats and of space. On July 1, 2015, the Trojans officially announced they would no longer be branded as "Arkansas–Little Rock" or "UALR," but will be the Little Rock Trojans effective immediately. Starting in the 2022-23 athletic season the Trojans will join the Ohio Valley Conference as their primary athletic conference.

Sports

Basketball

In the years since becoming a four-year university, Little Rock has won slightly more games than they've lost. However, during the six-year coaching tenure of Mike Newell, the Trojans made a big splash on the national stage. Appearing in their first ever NCAA tournament game in

1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 **Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. **Spain and Portugal enter ...

, the 14th seeded Little Rock beat the heavily favored and 3rd seeded

Notre Dame Fighting Irish The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are the athletic teams that represent the University of Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish participate in 23 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I intercollegiate sports and in the NCAA's Division ...

, coached by Digger Phelps, now a college basketball analyst for

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

, 90 to 83. The Trojans lost in the second round to

North Carolina State North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The unive ...

, 80 to 66 in two overtimes. The 1986 NCAA Tournament success led to post-season appearances for the Trojans in each of the next four seasons. In 1987, Little Rock beat Baylor,

Stephen F. Austin Stephen Fuller Austin (November 3, 1793 – December 27, 1836) was an American-born empresario. Known as the "Father of Texas" and the founder of Anglo Texas,Hatch (1999), p. 43. he led the second and, ultimately, the successful colonization ...

and

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

to make it to the National Invitation Tournament finals in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The Trojans lost to both LaSalle and

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...

to finish fourth. The next season, Little Rock lost to

Louisiana Tech Louisiana Tech University (Louisiana Tech, La. Tech, or simply Tech) is a public research university in Ruston, Louisiana. It is part of the University of Louisiana System and classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activi ...

in the first round of the NIT. The Trojans returned to the NCAA tournament in

1989 File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxon Valdez oil tanker runs ...

and

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

, losing to

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

76–71 in 1989 and to eventual tournament champion

UNLV The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) is a public land-grant research university in Paradise, Nevada. The campus is about east of the Las Vegas Strip. It was formerly part of the University of Nevada from 1957 to 1969. It includes th ...

102–72 the next season. With five tournament appearances out of six seasons in Little Rock, Newell departed after the 1990 season and the Trojans didn't return to post-season play until the 1996 NIT under coach Wimp Sanderson, the Trojans' most recent tournament game. The Trojans played in the 2011 NCAA Tournament, their first appearance since 1990, after winning the Sun Belt Conference Tournament championship. The women's team has also had its fair share of success since beginning play in 1969 and joining Division I in 1999. They have won the conference tournament in 2011, 2012, 2015 while competing in the NCAA tournament four times in the past seven years (2010, 2011, 2012, and 2015), while going to the Second Round in the first and latter appearances. Little Rock plays its home games in the Jack Stephens Center, an on-campus facility that seats 5,600. Prior to this home, the Trojans played at Alltel Arena (now Verizon Arena) in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Previous to that, Little Rock's home games were played in Barton Coliseum on the Arkansas State Fairgrounds in Little Rock.

Football

Though the football program has long since been disbanded, the Trojans were a national powerhouse when the school was known as Little Rock Junior College. Coach Jimmy Karam revived a program in 1947 that hadn't played football since 1933. The team won the 1947 Coffee Bowl 31–7 against Coffeyville Junior College and played in the 1948 Junior Sugar Bowl, losing 18–7 to South Georgia. In 1949, the team went undefeated and won the Junior Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, defeating Santa Ana Junior College 25–19 and earned the junior college national championship. The LRJC team had played their way to the Junior Rose Bowl by winning the Little Rock Shrine Bowl for the right to meet the California junior college champion.

Wrestling

On March 17, 2018, just hours before the start of the Division I NCAA wrestling championship finals, Little Rock announced the addition of a wrestling program. The school received a $1.4 million pledge from Arkansas businessman Greg Hatcher, considered the father of Arkansas wrestling for helping the sport grow in a state that did not field high school wrestling programs before 2008. The program began in 2019 and is the first Division I program in Arkansas. Little Rock joins

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

and the unified Long Island University program as new Division I programs in 2019. In June 2018, Little Rock named former Oklahoma State wrestler and assistant Neil Erisman as their first head coach. Little Rock's first commit was Kansas state champion Conner Ward.CONNER WARD COMMENCES BUILDING OF TROJAN ROSTER
/ref> As a member of the non-wrestling Ohio Valley Conference (just like its previous conference, the Sun Belt), the team is an associate member of the Pac-12. On January 24, 2021, Little Rock had its first win against a Division I school (Fresno State) and followed it up with a win against Pac-12 rival CSU Bakersfield. Paul Bianchi became the school's first NCAA qualifier at 133 pounds in 2021. He finished 1-2 in the tournament, earning the Trojans their first NCAA Tournament win and finishing T58 with half a point.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Little Rock Trojans