A dream season is slowly turning into a disaster, as Arkansas fell on the road to Missouri 79-76 to drop to 1-5 in SEC play.
Every conversation about this game has to include the fact that college basketball is a billion-dollar business, and it gets officiated like this:
Arkansas was whistled for 33 personal fouls. That’s their second straight game with 30+ fouls and their second straight game with at least 19 in the second half. Yes, Arkansas fouls a lot. But officials know that, a significant number of those 33 called on the Hogs were anticipation fouls: the official didn’t actually see any contact, but they saw the Mizzou player fall down and assumed contact had occurred.
In addition to non-existent contact, this is very obviously a blocking foul that was called a charge:
The referees are not solely responsible for Arkansas blowing a 10-point lead late, but if every Arkansas game is going to be officiated like this, I’m not sure how the Hogs are going to turn their season around. I’m not sure how any team could have a good season.
Team Stats
Arkansas didn’t get in transition much – what else is new? – but at least they scored 22 transition points. They made the most of the times they were able to run. The halfcourt offense was really bad once again, especially given the quality of Missouri’s defense.
Missouri is probably pretty happy overall. They did well in transition and decent in halfcourt. The Hogs played well in halfcourt defense, though the Tigers ultimately won the game at the free throw line.
This stinks. Arkansas actually shot a higher percentage in true shooting! That should be an auto-victory for an Eric Musselman-coached team. But this team just can’t get out of its own way. A whopping 29% turnover rate meant that Arkansas ultimately created fewer shot chances than the Tigers.
The good news is that the offense feels close. For back-to-back games, the Hogs have had excellent shot selection (42% rim USG in this one), hit their jump shots at a decent rate (62% EFG from 3), crashed the offensive boards (48%), and gotten to the free throw line. If they could just cut out the turnovers, they’d be good to go.
Defensively, just cutting out the fouls would be a huge start. The horrid officiating played a major role in Mizzou’s foul rate but once again, Arkansas does foul a lot. To foul that much and only force turnovers on 16% of possessions is not very efficient. The Hogs aren’t getting much bang for their buck there.
Individual Stats
I’m sure you can see it: Jordan Walsh was +12 in 13 minutes. This is not some kind of weird coincidence: he really is that beneficial to Arkansas as a team, even when he’s not shooting well, because he helps Arkansas space the floor in a way other Hog forwards cannot, and that ability is a lot more valuable than your “eye test” might think it is. This position of ours has been criticized by some in Arkansas sports media, and those people presumably have some egg on their faces this morning.
In this game, his results are more extreme, because he did shoot well. If he continues to shoot well, everybody will be on the same page about his value, because now he’ll be scoring in addition to his vital floor-spacing skills. The big issue for Walsh is (and will continue to be) fouls. He was called for five in 13 minutes. Two or three of them were really weak calls, but if that’s how they’re going to call it, I’m not sure what he’s supposed to do other than try to adjust.
We aren’t going to go too far patting ourselves on the back, because you can also see Kamani Johnson at a team-worst minus-16. We advocated for Kamani playing more minutes at the 5 – though there’s an implied understanding that you can’t start a 6’7 center against several SEC opponents – based on the fact that he leads all true forwards on the team in RAPM, ORAPM, and DRAPM: basically, he makes Arkansas’ overall, offensive, and defensive performances better than the Mitchell twins or Jalen Graham.
Despite showing up all over the stat sheet – seven points, seven rebounds, only one turnover – Kamani did not make a positive impact. That said, he only played the 5 for about five minutes in this game. Instead, for 26 of his 31 minutes, he was playing the 4 in place of Walsh. That’s certainly not what we advocated for! In that case, you’re taking a very high RAPM player (Walsh) and replacing him with a decent RAPM player (Kamani). It should not be surprising that it’s a downgrade. Anyone who shares the floor with Walsh is going to look good, and anyone who replaces him is going to look bad. We don’t have enough information to know if having Kamani replace Makhi Mitchell at the 5 for longer stretches of this game would have helped. Given that Walsh was in foul trouble, the Hogs had to fill 27 minutes at the 4 with somebody, and that poor somebody happened to be Kamani for this game.
Up Next
The Hogs are back at home Saturday against an Ole Miss team that figures to be very beatable. With a long sequence of winnable games to follow and the prospect of a Nick Smith return in a few weeks, there’s still a chance for the Hogs to salvage something out of this season.
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