The Hoop Hogs are 1-0 after breezing to a 76-58 win over North Dakota State in the opener Monday night. The big news was star guard Nick Smith, who missed the game as a precaution with an injury that the program is calling “day-to-day”.
The athletic Razorbacks overwhelmed the Bison early, jumping to a 9-2 lead before the game settled into a close, back-and-forth contest. A late first-half run proved decisive, as the Hogs led 34-26 at the half and ballooned the lead to 48-31 early in the second.
Ricky Council IV led the way with 22 points, while Trevon Brazile added 21 points and 12 rebounds. Devo Davis had 18 points. All five non-Smith freshmen saw the floor, with predictably mixed results. It will be good for them to continue to get minutes.
Advanced Stats
Confused? Check out the advanced stats glossary to learn more about the stats cited here.
It’s obviously going to be a while before we can truly evaluate this win, as we don’t know how good North Dakota State will be. They have a road trip to Kansas next, so unless they pull a monster upset, we’ll have to wait to evaluate them.
But the Hogs pretty thoroughly outplayed the Bison, at least at a high level. The Hogs successfully imposed their preferred pace (73 total possessions is more than the Bison wanted), defended really well on a per-possession basis, and scored on more than half their possessions. Good stuff.
Speeding a Dakota school up to 16.7 seconds per offensive possession is quite a feat. And as you can see, the Bison halfcourt offense suffered as a result of being made uncomfortable. That’s where this game was won.
The Hogs, on the other hand, were really not great in transition. That’s to be expected, as good transition offense is usually a product of players who have played together and trust each other to improvise at high speeds. Arkansas was solid in halfcourt, and as this roster gets more minutes together, the transition scoring will come.
A lot of coloring here, but the main takeaway is that Arkansas did not crash the offensive glass as we’ll as we’d like, although as we noted in the preview, North Dakota State emphasizes defensive rebounding and has a bunch of tall guys. The lack of offensive boards meant the Hogs weren’t great at turning possessions into shots, but it didn’t matter, as the Hogs got to the rim at will (51% of field goal attempts were dunks, layups, or tipins). Arkansas fouled too much but shut down the Bison shooting.
Quick note on positions: they are calculated using an algorithm that takes box score stats as inputs, so they are likely to change significantly as the season progresses and we get a larger sample size.
Ricky Council IV is the Arkansas MVP. He graded at a team-best 81, led the Hogs with +8.8 net points produced, and the Hogs were +20 while he was on the floor. Devo Davis was classic Devo: advanced stats didn’t love him (graded at 54, only +0.2 PProd), but the Hogs were +21 during his time on the floor. He just makes the team better in ways hard to explain. That’s been Devo his entire career.
In terms of role-finding, check out those Usage numbers. Anything higher than 20% is considered high-usage, so Brazile, Council, and Devo are the only qualifiers. Jordan Walsh with just 5% is interesting: he played fairly well, but his role on this team is not defined yet, so his direct contributions were minimal.
Up Next
North Dakota State will almost certainly finish as a top-200 team, so this will be a nice win if the Bison can play to their potential the rest of the way.
Friday’s opponent is Fordham. The Rams were a weird team in 2022, possessing one of the nation’s worst offenses but one of its best defenses. This year’s team has a new coach and looks completely different, so it’s too early to tell how tough they’ll be.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to follow us on Twitter.
The latest from Fayette Villains, straight to your inbox
Enter your email to subscribe and receive new post alerts and other updates. You can unsubscribe at any time.