If you were focused on the Liberty Bowl, you might have missed the Razorback basketball team – top-10 for now, but for the second straight year, AP voters will fix that mistake in the next poll – laying an egg in Baton Rouge. Arkansas trailed almost wire-to-wire in a 60-57 defeat.
To be clear, this loss isn’t overly devastating. LSU entered the game 11-1, although our models say they weren’t even an NCAA Tournament team as their schedule was pretty weak and they limped to many of their victories. It was on the road – the team’s first true road game – and the Hogs were without Nick Smith. The Hogs will play far better basketball than this in January, February, and March, and if the Tigers can get to 20 wins (very possible) than this won’t even be that bad of a defeat.
But once again, Arkansas will start SEC play near the bottom of the standings and try to work their way back up. If Smith doesn’t actually rejoin the team and look healthy the rest of the year, this season is probably going to be a disappointment. Between the injuries to Smith and Trevon Brazile, it’s hard to blame Eric Musselman or anyone else. That’s just bad luck.
Advanced Stats
This game happened at a very slow pace. LSU was able to control the tempo because the game was officiated exactly how they wanted it to be. More on that in a second.
One of our Keys to the Game from the preview was beating LSU down the floor, as the Tigers have been vulnerable to good transition offenses. Arkansas has been a very good transition offense all season, but they were not on Wednesday night. The Hogs got just 12 points in transition on 16 transition possessions. That’s a horrible efficiency.
Arkansas was actually slightly better than LSU in halfcourt, but it wasn’t quite enough.
The shooting numbers tell the story. Arkansas only got to the rim on 37% of field goal attempts – that’s a season low – and the jump shots the Hogs took instead cost them the game. Arkansas’ 40% effective field goal percentage is terrible, but they shot 63% at the rim.
LSU did everything in its power to limit Arkansas’ rim usage. The Tigers made it clear how they wanted to defend from the opening tip:
That’s an old friend: the pack line defense. LSU has three defenders in the high post to take away the dribble drive. One pass away defenders (circled) are positioned in the gaps between their man and the ball. Jordan Walsh has a wide open 3, and Ricky Council IV could dribble right, draw the help, and kick to Anthony Black for a corner 3 that would also be open. But LSU is fine with that: they want Arkansas to shoot a 3-pointer, even an open one.
Arkansas has played two pure pack line defenses so far this season: San Diego State and UNC Greensboro. The Hogs scored 67 (in regulation) and 65 points in those two games. Now LSU tried it and held the Hogs to 57 points. This defense is a very, very clear weakness for this team. LSU isn’t even a pure pack line team (they ran a very aggressive version of it last year under Will Wade but they’re more multiple this season).
Every part of LSU’s plan was about forcing the kind of jump shots Arkansas can’t hit. Here, the Tigers duck under a ball screen, clearly unconcerned about leaving Devo Davis open for a pull-up 3:
And it’s not like Arkansas didn’t know what they needed to do. Here, Black does an excellent job of identifying and drawing the one-pass-away defender and then kicking to his man (Walsh) for a wide-open 3:
If you want to be a top-10 team, that shot has to go in something like 40% of the time. Heck, one-third of the time would be acceptable. But Arkansas was 0 of 13 from beyond the arc at the half, with most of those shots being pretty open.
The Hogs are still capable of winning even on a cold shooting night, but they have to draw fouls. As you can see from the numbers, that didn’t happen. Arkansas came in as one of the nation’s elite teams at getting to the line, while LSU’s defense was pretty mediocre at keeping opponents off the line. In theory, the Hogs should have made it to the line at a decent rate, but that didn’t happen. There weren’t many egregious calls, but basically anything borderline was not called:
This is pretty good defense all-around by LSU, but you absolutely could have called a blocking foul on Justice Williams (#11) as he clearly comes under Black when he’s in the air. Then on the shooting sequence, the on-ball defender (#20 Derek Fountain) does a really good job of jumping straight up with his arms in the air, but his teammate (#34 Shawn Phillips) brings his right arm over Walsh’s head, which is usually called a foul.
Here’s another one, where Black posts up Justice Hill and Hill clearly slaps his right arm, forcing Black to abandon a shot attempt:
Are these major missed calls? No, not really. But they are all borderline and none of them were called.
The whole game was officiated so loosely in this way – only 27 combined foul calls and 22 combined free throws – and then in the final three minutes LSU drew two critical and-ones. The first was questionable, but the second was not:
What’s even the call here? Is that a block, or are they saying Mitchell did something with his hands? Fountain actually initiates the contact with his right knee. It’s bad defense, and Mitchell is clearly just retreating, offering a minimal contest while he gets out of the way. If this was a Doug Shows-officiated game where each team shot 35 free throws, then maybe you can toss that one into the sea of touch fouls. But in this game? Really?
The “what if the officials just don’t call fouls?” issue is a big one for Arkansas, given the offensive scheme. We wrote this after the SEC Semifinal loss to Texas A&M last season:
But did this loss expose a concern for Arkansas moving forward? Possibly. The Aggies were whistled for 16 team fouls and allowed Arkansas to shoot 18 free throws. We discussed the implausibility of those numbers in the post-game notes, but I think it points to the type of game that is likely to end Arkansas’ NCAA Tournament. This team struggles to shoot — they rank 211th in the country in Effective Field Goal % — leaving them reliant on offensive rebounding, avoiding turnovers, and getting to the free throw line. If they can’t get to the foul line, I just don’t think the offense is good enough to keep them in the game.
Arkansas is much better than 211th in EFG% this season, but the general point still stands. Both pack line (LSU) and no-middle defenses (Texas A&M) can, when properly executed, contest the ball far out from the basket instead of right under it. That puts you at a major advantage with college officials, who tend to only reward offensive players who can get right up to the rim. The same contact that’s whistled a foul two feet from the basket is often uncalled six feet from the basket. It’s no surprise these kinds of defenses are dominant in college hoops right now, particularly among underdogs, with more and more teams abandoning traditional man-to-man in favor of them.
So what does Arkansas do? First, they need Nick Smith back. The jump shots and midrange floaters have to go in at a higher rate, even on the road. Beyond that, Arkansas has to be better in transition: failure to punish LSU before they could get set up in the pack line was a surprising issue. Finally, more decisive aggression is needed. That usually comes in time for Muss-coached teams. I thought Black had it, but Council did not in this game. Devo also had it, but he’s not a good enough shooter or rim attacker to take advantage.
Up Next
The Hogs get a full week off before hosting Mizzou next Wednesday. The Tigers just crushed Kentucky, so they are a solid team. The very bottom of the SEC is pretty bad, but the middle and top are very good, so there won’t be many breaks in the schedule.
This is the last week-long break before the two-games-a-week schedule kicks off. So if Smith is going to be healthy and contribute at all this season, I think it’s fair to say that he has to play against Mizzou. If he doesn’t suit up, then it’s time to panic that he’s not ever going to contribute much in a Razorback uniform.
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