Well, it happened again. Arkansas welcomed a ranked opponent into Bud Walton Arena and beat them once again. The Hogs are now 4-0 against AP-ranked teams this season. Their overall record is now 23-6 (12-4), leaving them in a 3-way tie for 2nd in the SEC with Tennessee and Kentucky. Arkansas obviously owns the tiebreaker over both, along with first-place Auburn.

The three-game home losing streak to the Wildcats that dated to the Qualls dunk game in 2014 is now over. Arkansas is now likely a 5-seed in the NCAA Tournament, with as high as a 3-seed still possible.

So how did it happen? Let’s dive into the data.

Advanced Stats

Confused? Check out the advanced stats glossary to learn more about the stats cited here.

Team Stats

Pretty simple here: Kentucky was better at creating shots thanks to their offensive rebounding, but Arkansas was better at making shots, especially at the free throw line and inside the arc. Yes, that’s right, as dominant as Tshiebwe was — and he was dominant — Kentucky as a team hit just 51% of shots from 2-point land. Arkansas’ defense is just so good at denying easy looks.

Also, interesting note: my model had Kentucky as the 4th-best team in the country entering Saturday. Despite the loss, the Cats moved up to 3rd. It helps when each of the AP poll’s top six teams loses on the same day.

Player Stats

Tshiebwe was fantastic, of course, recording a game score of +13.1, but Arkansas gave Notae a lot more help. Notae’s +8.6 was only the 15th-best performance by a Razorback player this year (that seems low to me), but five different Hogs scored more than every Kentucky player other than Tshiebwe.

Kellen Grady and Davion Mintz were really awful, and it’s easy to see why Kentucky was so eager to get Sahvir Wheeler and TyTy Washington back in the lineup. Even though they looked rusty in the first half, they were the better options.

John Calipari said that Kentucky’s plan was to have Jacob Toppin guard Notae. Apparently the Cats think Toppin is a great perimeter defender. He was not on Saturday. He recorded a game-worst minus-11 in just 12 minutes and had to be switched off Notae just a few minutes into the game. Yikes.

Final note: Toney’s score seems low. He’s been getting low game scores all year because a lot of his defensive effort cannot be accounted for. He only had 4 points but played a pivotal role in the game. Game score for individual effort is valuable but not all-encompassing.

Game Score

Game score is a normalized value that scales a team’s adjusted efficiency in a game against all other performances by all other teams during the season. Arkansas’ overall grade of 89 means that the Hogs played Kentucky better than 89% of all teams have played all games this season. Obviously these values are adjusted for opponent: beating Kentucky by 2 yielded Arkansas a higher game score than beating Georgia by 26.

Anything above 80 is necessary to beat an elite team. The Hogs score well on both offense and defense, while Kentucky lost this game on the defensive end. As discussed above, the Wildcats simply allowed Arkansas to shoot the ball too well, especially inside the arc. I thought Arkansas’ shot selection was fantastic in this game.

Here are Arkansas’ game scores over the season. The black line is overall game scores, while offense and defense are the blue and orange lines, respectively. The green line is a running average of the last 10 games:

You can clearly see the rough patch from Oklahoma to Texas A&M, and then solid play since. Arkansas is now on its second-best two-game offensive stretch of the season, behind only the Gardner-Webb and Northern Iowa games back in November. The Hogs’ 10-game moving average is now at its highest point of the year, so the Hogs are peaking at the right time.

What’s Next?

Unfortunately, things don’t get much easier for the Hogs. With Tennessee’s win over Auburn on Saturday, the Hogs are still likely to end up with the 4-seed in Tampa unless they win in Knoxville next Saturday. Here’s a quick look at the tiebreak scenarios:

• Auburn controls its own destiny for the 1-seed, but their situation is suddenly precarious. They have a tricky midweek game against Mississippi State and close with South Carolina at one. Win both and they are outright SEC champs. If they fall in Starkville, then either Arkansas or Tennessee going 2-0 next week (they can’t both go 2-0, obviously) would force a tie and actually knock Auburn out of the 1-seed, since both own the tiebreaker over Auburn.
• Arkansas controls its own destiny for the 2, and can still get the 1 with a 2-0 week and an Auburn loss. However, should the Hogs fall in Knoxville and Tennessee and Kentucky go 2-0, then Arkansas will fall all the way to the 4.
• Tennessee is the same as Arkansas: the Vols need to go 2-0 and have Auburn lose a game. Pretty simple. The Vols own tiebreakers over Auburn (head-to-head) and Kentucky (split but beat top seed). Tennessee has 6-23 Georgia in the midweek so don’t count on them dropping one before Saturday. If Kentucky loses at Florida, Tennessee could even lose to Arkansas and still avoid the 4.
• Kentucky has the worst chances of getting the 1. To get the 1-seed, Kentucky needs this wild sequence: Auburn 0-2, and the Tennessee-Arkansas winner losing their midweek game. Likely? Not at all. If Kentucky falls at Florida, they will end up with the 4 as long as the Arkansas-Tennessee loser wins its midweek game.

Arkansas’ midweek game, of course, is LSU, which will not be a cakewalk. Will Wade’s team has been pitiful away from home, but they are a top-25 team when Xavier Pinson is healthy. He was not when Arkansas beat the Tigers in Baton Rouge, but he is now. That game should not be overlooked.