The Hogs put up a good fight in Waco but fell to Baylor, 67-64. The loss drops Arkansas to 0-5 in road games and 4-0 in home games in the SEC/Big 12 challenge, which really is just a battle of who draws a decent home matchup.
Team Stats
One easy trap to fall into is to think that Arkansas’ defense is playing really well to hold Baylor to just 67 points while the offense is what caused the issues. That’s really not true. This game was played at a very slow pace – just 63 possessions – and Baylor’s 106.3 offensive efficiency was actually quite good. In fact, the Bears jumped from 2nd to 1st in our model’s Adjusted Offensive Efficiency rankings after the game.
So Arkansas’ defense did slightly worse than expected, though it was still pretty solid given the quality of opponent.
Arkansas shot pretty well and crashed the offensive glass. But the Hogs got killed by turnovers (offense) and free throws (defense). That’s really the story. The Hogs did basically everything else well. Holding an elite offense like Baylor to 39% Effective FG% is just insanely good.
Arkansas’ foul trouble
Arkansas’ good field goal defense once again came at a brutal cost. Two more Hogs fouled out, marking the third time in a month that multiple Hogs fouled out of a game. Baylor lived at the free throw line despite only taking 15% of their shots at the rim.
The Hogs also found themselves unable to force turnovers. The fouls and turnovers issues are related. We have some stats that can measure these things. First, there are kills. A “kill” is a forceful ending of an opponent possession: a steal, a block, or a drawn charge. The first two show up in the box score and we can extract the third via play-by-play data.
Here are Arkansas’ leaders in Kills per 40 Minutes:
- Makhel Mitchell 7.2
- Makhi Mitchell 5.3
- Kamani Johnson 4.6
- Jalen Graham 4.0
- Trevon Brazile 4.0
- Anthony Black 3.6
Obviously, it’s mostly big men, since blocking shots is a huge part of it. But kills are only part of the equation. Getting a kill means risking getting a defensive foul – for steals, reach-ins; for blocks, shooting fouls; for charges, blocks – so skilled defenders can accumulate a lot of kills in exchange for relatively few fouls. You can create a stat called kill-to-foul ratio that measures a defender’s ability to kill opposing possessions without fouling.
Here are Arkansas’ leaders in Kills-to-Fouls:
- Anthony Black 1.35
- Makhel Mitchell 1.32
- Ricky Council IV 1.24
- Nick Smith 1.17
- Trevon Brazile 1.04
Taking the two stats together, Black and Makhel are the team’s two best overall defenders at killing possessions, as they show up near the top of both lists. Kamani scores as aggressive, killing lots of possessions but fouling at a high rate to do so, while Council scores as passive, killing very few possessions but fouling even less.
Now that we’ve oriented ourselves to the stats, how does the team look at killing opposing possessions without fouling since the start of SEC play?
So Arkansas obviously has a much better kill-to-foul ratio at home. The Vanderbilt and Mizzou (road) games are bizarre outliers because neither of those teams are very good at drawing fouls, so to force Arkansas into a kill-to-foul ratio of 0.5 is clearly some aggressive officiating.
Another way to show those bottom numbers is to give them as an answer to the question, “When an Arkansas defender kills a possession, what are the chances they will get called for a defensive foul?” Here’s that answer:
- Home 46%
- Road 58%
So about three-fifths of Arkansas’ attempts to aggressively end an opposing possession end up in a foul. The issue here is that if you aren’t an elite defender – or at least, the officials don’t think you are an elite defender – then being aggressive is going to cost you dearly and probably not be worth it.
In several games this year, Arkansas seems to come out of the halftime locker room in a close game looking to clamp down defensively. Creighton, Alabama, Vanderbilt, Mizzou, and now Baylor all come to mind. The Hogs collected a ton of fouls early in the second half of all of those games. In fact, here’s a look at half splits on those kill-to-foul ratios:
So Arkansas is only getting 0.7 kills per foul in the second half of these road games (60% foul chance). The second halves of the Vanderbilt, Mizzou (road), and Baylor games are all particularly interesting: all are terrible (0.4, 0.4, 0.3), and all were close games on the road.
I guess it’s possible that there’s a conspiracy and the SEC keeps buzzing the officials at halftime and telling them to change the game. But a more likely explanation is that something the staff is telling the players at halftime (or not telling them) is causing them to come out a little too jacked up in the second half when they have a close game on the road. It’s hard to say what that could be, but the pattern is unavoidable, unless every officiating crew just suddenly changes the way they officiate after halftime, and Arkansas is one of the only teams in the nation that cannot quickly adjust.
As we saw, Arkansas actually did a great job of defending Baylor’s shots, but it’s when they tried for more aggressive plays that they got burned. Maybe the Hogs just need to focus on trying to defend shooters and clear defensive rebounds, and forget about trying to force turnovers. That stinks, but this team just doesn’t seem to have the ability to be aggressive without fouling.
I do also wonder how much Arkansas’ inability to keep opponents away from the rim (more discussion below) is playing a factor in this. Opponents whose halftime adjustments are “be more aggressive in getting to the rim” are having a ton of success against the Hogs early in second halves.
Individual Stats
Council had a nice game, but we need to discuss the position that had the most variability (again).
The center position continues to be Arkansas’ undoing
The normalized RAPMs of Arkansas’ five starters are 100, 100, 97, 94… and 70. RAPM measures how good a team is when a player is on the floor regardless of who he’s on the floor with. Arkansas has four Final Four-level starters (#1 Purdue’s starting five: 100, 100, 99, 95, 77, with an 85 as the first guy off the bench). Arkansas’ 70 is, of course, Makhi Mitchell, who was minus-10 against Baylor.
So replace him, right? Well, it’s not that easy. The Hogs do not have an option that is clearly better than Makhi. No one that Eric Musselman and staff can be completely confident in to make Arkansas better. It seems to vary by game and matchup. Here’s a quick look at how the options stack up now:
- Makhi Mitchell. His RAPM of 70 is second-best among the four options, with is 77 ORAPM grading as the best and his 55 DRAPM grading as the worst. So he’s the best offensive option (not by much) but is a defensive liability (by a lot). The “defensive liability” may seem strange given that he leads the Hogs in defensive rebound rate (23%), is second in block rate (5%), and fourth in steal rate (3%). Unfortunately, it’s the non-box-score things like “being in position” that have been an issue for him. Makhi leads all centers in minutes played this year, and Arkansas presently ranks 321st out of 363 teams in Rim USG, which is the percentage of opponent field goal attempts that are dunks, layups, or tip-ins. That’s not all Makhi’s fault, but not being able to prevent opponents from getting those shots off is a big reason why Arkansas spends games against athletic opponents in foul trouble. The “athletic opponents” issue explains Makhi’s sharp drop in RAPM since the start of conference play. And before you go too deep into a “Muss will always have the Hogs ready for a March run” rabbit hole, it’s worth noting that Arkansas ranked 27th in the nation in defensive Rim USG last year. This is a totally different problem that the Hogs are facing right now.
- Kamani Johnson. Johnson has also declined in RAPM, but not by as much. He’s currently the leader in RAPM among centers at 76. His ORAPM of 58 is second-best, while his DRAPM of 81 is second-best. He’s at his best against zone and pack-line defenses, where his high offensive rebound rate (team-best 16%) and high free throw USG rate (team-best 31%) are most valuable. He also turns it over a team-low 14% of possessions. Of course, he’s not very active. He fouls a ton and doesn’t create his own shot at all. And his lack of height makes it almost impossible to play him against taller opponents.
- Makhel Mitchell. Makhel was a promising +6 in 23 minutes against Baylor in his return from a foot injury. His 69 RAPM is only third-best among Arkansas’ four centers, but his DRAPM of 84 is the best. He is very limited offensively (just a 43 ORAPM). Like Kamani, he is poor at creating his own shot, but he’s less able to get to the line, a worse offensive rebounder, and much more turnover-prone (20%). That said, he’s three inches taller, a better defensive rebounder, and much less foul-prone. As mentioned earlier, his 7.2 kills per 40 minutes is the best on the team by a mile, and he averages 1.32 kills per personal foul, which is also really good.
- Jalen Graham. Graham’s RAPM of 54 and ORAPM of 32 are both the worst among center options, but his numbers are improving. The Hogs were +10 with him on the floor against Baylor. In nonconference play, his high turnover rate and high usage rate meant that he wasted a ton of possessions, killing his RAPM. However, his ability to score at high volume has keyed some major runs in SEC play. However, the Hogs have also had plenty of droughts with him out there. His personal offensive rating of 91.7 is the worst on the team, thanks to his team-worst 24% turnover rate.
At this point, none of these four options are going to get you very far in March. That could obviously change, but I don’t see it right now. If you want to go all-in on defense and hope that Nick Smith can return and save the offense, I’d argue that Makhel is the best option. But again, it may vary by hot hand and matchup.
Up Next
More must-wins are on the schedule, starting with a midweek home game against Texas A&M.
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