Down 25-8 midway through the first half, facing a rout at home, and 0-2 start in SEC play, and the collapse of so much of the momentum the program has been building for three years, the Hogs were in dire straits. Mizzou was doing the same thing LSU did: packing defenders inside to keep Arkansas away from the rim and forcing jump shots. This is how every team will play Arkansas from here on in. The Hogs were pressing. Ricky Council IV, Arkansas’ lone volume scorer, was having an off-night, and the Razorbacks had no options to space the Mizzou zone.
Joseph Pinion checked into the game with 10:55 left in the first half. After that, different ballgame. Arkansas outscored Mizzou 66-41 over the game’s final 31 minutes en route to a 74-68 win in Fayetteville. Pinion finished with 13 points, hitting 3 of 6 from beyond the arc. As we’ll see, that was enough to lead the Hogs in Box Score Contribution. But there are two other keys to Pinion’s performance: first, it forced Mizzou to stretch their zone, creating more openings for Council and Devo Davis to find some midrange jumpers, which eventually started falling. Second, Arkansas’ defense did not fall off in any way after Pinion entered the game. Pinion got beat to the rim on one play and gave up a semi-open 3 after his closeout was weak on another play, but overall, he played well defensively. Given that he’s Arkansas’ only reliable 3-point threat until Nick Smith is healthy, the ability to play merely replacement-level defense is critical for him to get more minutes in the near future.
Grading the Hogs
Our model assigns a grade for each game (overall, offense, and defense) based on the efficiency numbers and the quality of the opponent. The result is normalized to give a grade 0-100 for each phase of the game.
Here’s Arkansas’ all-season performances:
Arkansas’ defense has been almost perfect since the Oklahoma game, while the offense fell apart in the loss to LSU. But the offense bounced back, leading to an overall grade of 90, Arkansas’ sixth grade of 90+ this season, and four of those have come in the last five games.
Advanced Stats
The game was lower-scoring than our model’s projection (85-75) only because of pace: our model thought this game would be played much faster (75 possessions), but instead, two fast teams both played very slow, each focusing on keeping the other out of transition. Our model thought Arkansas would win the efficiency battle 109-102; instead it was 112-103, so both offenses actually overachieved on a per-possession basis.
Arkansas’ inability to get in transition was disappointing. This was the second straight game where the Hogs were facing a shaky transition defense… but also the second straight game where the Hogs did not get as much from transition as we’d hoped. Arkansas took 18.7 seconds per offensive possession, their longest of the season by a very large margin.
In halfcourt, it worked, as the Hogs posted solid halfcourt efficiency numbers and managed to hold Mizzou’s elite halfcourt offense to a very pedestrian performance.
I really was impressed with Mizzou. Their scheme on offense is so good. They took just 17% of their shots from midrange and got to the rim on half their shots… but only shot 50% there. The Hogs were tenacious under the basket, as we expected.
On offense, this from the preview ended up being key:
The Tigers are huge gamblers. They will force a ton of turnovers (7th) at the expense of allowing open shots. Their lack of height means that they are very bad on the glass (322nd) and they also foul too much (218th). Their primary goal is to steal some possessions with turnovers and then force you into a shootout with them, hoping they can out-shoot you.
Mizzou did end up forcing turnovers, but the Hogs got to the line and crashed the offensive boards, canceling out Mizzou’s “out-shoot you” plans. Arkansas smothered the perimeter – no surprise there – and once Pinion started stretching the defense, suddenly hanging on in a jump shooting competition wasn’t out of the question.
Pinion wins Box Score Contribution (VORP), but the unsung hero is Devo Davis. He guarded Mizzou leading scorer D’Moi Hodge and held him to just four shot attempts. As we discussed in the preview, Hodge is very good at moving away from the ball and Mizzou will try to set him up for shots, but he’s not an elite shot creator. That’s a problem when Devo is matched up on you, as he can shut down anything away from the ball. The Tigers simply had to find other options, and they were not as appetizing.
Up Next
Arkansas is on the road Saturday against Auburn. The Tigers are still in the top 25 but took a road loss to Georgia. They are still a very good team with an excellent defense, but there’s a lot in that matchup that favors Arkansas. It would be a really big win with Alabama looming next week.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.
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.