Arkansas needed an almost perfect game to beat Gonzaga and advance to a second straight Elite Eight. They got it, with heroes both familiar and unfamiliar stepping up.
The Hogs’ 74-68 win over Gonzaga is probably one of the most impactful wins of the post-Nolan era, maybe even the most impactful. Is there another one that comes to mind that tops Arkansas’ first-ever win over a 1-seed and second straight Elite Eight?
Here’s how it all went down.
Grading the Hogs
Confused? Check out the advanced stats glossary to learn more about the stats cited here.
Quick Recap
- Arkansas truly beat Gonzaga at their own game. A big key to beating the Zags is to prevent them from getting in transition: the Hogs didn’t, choosing instead to play the Zags’ preferred pace and shut them down at it.
- As we discussed in the preview, the Hogs took advantage of Gonzaga’s iffy shot selection, forcing them into a bunch of midrange jumpers.
- Arkansas shot better from beyond the arc (!!!), did a better job of getting to the rim, and did a better job of creating shots. There’s your ballgame.
Game Score
For each game, each team gets an offense, defense, and overall grade, based on how their adjusted efficiencies compare to all other games by all other teams this season. The grade is from 0-100.
The Hogs have earned defensive game scores of 97 and 99 in their last two games. That late-season defensive swoon? Gone. The Razorbacks have been dialed in all tournament.
Team Stats
A few observations:
‘Don’t let Gonzaga run,’ they said
The Zags ran, but didn’t really go anywhere. From the preview:
The Zags are in transition on nearly one-third of their possessions and convert 65% of them into points. This is how they crush less-athletic teams. They’ve hit a transition rate of at least 20% in every game this season.
Arkansas let Gonzaga’s top-ranked transition offense run. The Zags got in transition on 28% of their possessions, just short of their season average of 32%. But their efficiency on those possessions was just 113.6 (season average: 146.9, 1st in Division I). They scored on just half of them (season average: 65%, 1st).
Gonzaga’s 13.8 seconds per possession is faster than its season average, which is the fastest in the nation.
Arkansas created more shots and won without free throws
We expected the Hogs to create more shot chances:
Let’s start with shot creation. This is where Gonzaga is similar to Vermont and New Mexico State. They generate just 91.8 shot chances per 100 halfcourt possessions, which ranks 178th nationally. They are pretty good at avoiding turnovers, but they aren’t a great offensive rebounding team… Because they are above-average at getting to the line, they take just 71.8 field goals per 100 halfcourt possessions, which ranks 282nd nationally. So they may shoot well, but they might not shoot enough.
…
Gonzaga’s defense is a mirror image of its offense in terms of halfcourt numbers. The Zags allow too many shots (78.0 per 100 halfcourt possessions, with a 92.2 EPR). They are good at clearing defensive rebounds, but just like Vermont and NMSU, they don’t force many turnovers, which means their opponents get at least one shot chance on way too many possessions.
Sure enough, the Hogs created 102.6 shot chances per 100 possessions against just 94.9 for the Zags. Au’Diese Toney’s defense on point guard Andrew Nembhard cut the head off the proverbial snake, and Gonzaga never looked comfortable in its halfcourt offense outside of a couple small spurts. The Hogs hounded the Zags into 15 turnovers, while the Razorbacks had more offensive boards (10) than turnovers (8), hence the EPR of greater than 100 (more than 100 shots created per 100 possessions).
Those extra shot chances didn’t become trips to the line. Arkansas — the nation’s leader in made free throws — didn’t make a free throw in the first half, which is insane.
Arkansas shot better than the nation’s #1 shooting offense and shooting defense
The Hogs used their insanely-high field goal rate (93.5 attempts per 100 possessions, fourth-most of the season) to simply shoot better than Gonzaga: 45% EFG to 41%. Arkansas got to the rim more often and shot better from beyond the arc.
With the Hogs defending the perimeter and denying the rim, Gonzaga was forced into a lot of low-percentage midrange shots. We knew this was possible:
The weakness in the shooting is in the shot selection… the Zags don’t launch a ton of 3-pointers (265th), preferring instead to take midrange jumpers, which account for 29% of their shots this year. Midrange jumpers… are, obviously, least-efficient shot out there. The Zags get 0.86 points per midrange attempt, compared to 1.28 at the rim and 1.12 from beyond the arc. The Hogs have been very good at denying shots at the rim (60th) and at defending midrange jumpers (25th), so the Hogs actually have a decent chance to force Gonzaga into bad shot selection here.
The last part is basically what happened. Gonzaga only shot 50% at the rim and took one-third of their shots from midrange, much higher than their season average, which was already too high.
Player Stats
Raise your hand if you had Trey Wade as the most efficient player on the floor. Wade’s +10.8 contribution was his second-best of the season (he was +11.3 in the first Mizzou win). He hit more than half his shots, including three of four from beyond the arc. He defended Chet Holmgren, who was Gonzaga’s best player by a mile despite playing only 23 minutes.
Also, a quick word on JD Notae and the stat you see on the far right. It’s new: it’s Adjusted Plus-Minus (APM). Basically, I take actual plus-minus (how much the team outscores their opponent while that player is on the floor, called Real Plus Minus, or RPM, and seen in the third column from the right), and I adjust it for the quality of the opponent and the number of minutes played. The highest APMs belong to players who outscore a good opponent over a long period of time on the floor. In theory, adding up all the BPMs will equal the minutes-adjusted APM of the team, since they both use team Adjusted Scoring Margin as their baseline.
Notae led the Hogs in APM. He’s been second-best all year, narrowly trailing Jaylin Williams. He was not very efficient in getting his 21 points: he hit 9 of 29 from the floor, taking the most field goals in an NCAA Tournament game since BYU’s Jimmer Fredette in 2011 and the most in an NCAA Tournament win since 1999. Obviously, he did other things: six rebounds, six assists, three steals, two blocks. But why would Eric Musselman after the game say that he’d trust Notae to take 10 more shots when he’d already missed 20?
The reason why is actually practical: on a large number of possessions (a quarter or more of halfcourt possessions), the offense will not be able to get the shot it wants before the shot clock runs out. If the shot clock gets low, you’re always better off taking a shot than accepting a shot clock violation or turning it over with a dangerous pass to try and make something happen. The shots you take in these scenarios are not average-boosting shots; in fact, they rarely go in. Notae, who clearly does not care about his shooting average, will happily take them. Notae taking those shots means Wade will always be open for a corner 3 and Stanley Umude will always be open for a wing 3 and Williams will always be open for an elbow jumper.
Yes, some of Notae’s shots were unnecessary, and you probably need him to shoot a slightly higher percentage, especially on non-rushed shots, but the main takeaway is this: Notae eats all of Arkansas’ bad possessions, and many of his missed shots are turnovers for other teams, or at least, those missed shots are spread out among several ball-dominant players.
Up Next
It’s already been a storybook season. Now the Hogs have a chance to end Coach K’s career in the Elite Eight, as Arkansas faces Duke for the first time since the 1994 national championship.
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