Arkansas avenged an ugly loss in Tulsa last year with an 88-78 win over Oklahoma in the Crimson and Cardinal Classic (catchy name). The Sooners shot well to open the game, building an early nine-point lead, but Arkansas’ athleticism took over after that. The Hogs led by as many as 16 in the second half before playing stall-ball late to finish off the victory.
Ricky Council IV had 26 points on a devastating 10 of 15 from the floor. Nick Smith added 21 points, while Makhi Mitchell finished with 10 points, six rebounds, four assists, two blocks, and zero turnovers. The Razorbacks got in transition frequently and used their tall guards to punish the shorter OU defenders on drives to the rim. Overall, this was a textbook offensive performance.
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’ overall grade of 89 means that given the margin and quality of opponent, Arkansas’ performance in this game was in the 89th percentile of all performances by all teams this season. For a team of Arkansas’ caliber and aspirations, anything about 70 is the target for each game. The Hogs have had four performances below 70 (North Dakota State, South Dakota State, San Diego State, UNC Greensboro), but won all four. The loss to Creighton (73) falls under the category of “acceptable loss” given the close margin and high quality of opponent.
This was a nice bounceback after the ugly UNC Greensboro performance. It’s clear that defenses built to prevent dribble drives (like UNCG’s) are a matchup issue for the Hogs, while defenses built to force tough two-point shots from isolation (like Oklahoma’s) are much easier for Arkansas to match up with.
Advanced Stats
Our model pick of 68-62 was way off, as this game ended up having a lot more offense than we expected. The model projected 69 total possessions, so that was close. The difference was that each team’s offense mostly solved the other’s defense. I saw “mostly” because while the Sooners were hot early, they eventually cooled off…
…and once they cooled off, the Hogs started turning their missed shots into runouts. It’s hard to get in transition against Oklahoma, but the Hogs had 22 points on 14 transition possessions. Once the Sooners started missing shots on offense, the Hogs started beating them down the floor. That significantly increased the pace during the game’s middle 20 minutes, to a level the Sooners were not comfortable with. (Arkansas’ 16.8 seconds per possession is skewed quite a bit by the stall-ball the Hogs played over the final five minutes. During the middle 20, the Hogs were going much faster.)
Of course, the Hogs were also excellent in halfcourt, scoring 66 points and scoring on 57% of possessions.
In a nutshell: Arkansas was slightly better at creating shot chances (95.7 to 91.4), due mostly to turnovers, did a better job of getting to the free throw line, chased Oklahoma shooters off the perimeter (allowing the Hogs to survive some hot shooting), and then won the game under the basket, shooting 84% at the rim. As we’d hoped, the Razorbacks didn’t settle for bad shots, taking advantage of OU’s defense to get right to the rim and use athleticism there.
We said it in the preview:
While the Hogs need to prevent Oklahoma from finishing its paint shots, Arkansas has to finish its own. The winner will probably be the team that shoots a better percentage at the rim.
And there you have it. Arkansas had zero issue getting to the rim and making shots there. Even the Hogs’ midrange jumpers were mostly high-percentage, like Nick Smith’s sweet baseline floater:
Again from the preview:
The Sooners will force you to make tough twos, but they’ll have no answers if you can.
No answers, indeed. That started with tremendous spacing. We wondered if the Hogs could space the floor as well with Trevon Brazile out for the year, and apparently part of the answer to that is that Makhi Mitchell can work out on the perimeter too:
When all five guys can pass and drive, it’s very hard to defend.
In addition to good spacing, the Hogs also took advantage of Oklahoma’s limited-help man defense. Remember those side isos that Villanova tried against Oklahoma that we looked at in the preview? The Sooners didn’t have a prayer trying to defend them with a smaller guard on Ricky Council:
The Sooners are actually helping there, and violating Moser’s mentor Rick Majerus’ cardinal rule of defense: never leave a corner shooter. The Hogs – knowing Moser’s tendencies – have both Anthony Black and Devo Davis rotating into the backside corner to try and drag help defenders away, but Grant Sherfield stays to help anyway… and Council breezes right by him anyway.
Defensively, we wondered whether or not Arkansas could hold up in 1-on-1s under the hoop. It was our Key to the Game #1. How about “zero points in the paint for Tanner Groves”? Was that on your bingo card?
That play – less than one minute into the second half – was Groves’ final field goal attempt from inside the arc. Oklahoma’s last attempted post-up came only a few seconds later, and Groves got locked up by Mitchell and traveled. The Sooners went the last 18+ minutes without taking a single shot off a post-up, one of their biggest plays. That’s something Arkansas couldn’t do last year. The Mitchell twins were recruited to give that kind of physicality under the basket, and Makhi passed this test with flying colors.
With the Sooners unable to get much early offense out of their bigs (“early offense” here meaning designed plays, so not off of offensive rebounds), their guards had to do everything. I was impressed with freshman Milos Uzan, while Sherfield, the Sooner star, was as-advertised as a shooter. But Arkansas’ ball pressure and athleticism eventually forced enough turnovers to fuel a rout at the other end. Oklahoma still shot a great percentage, and there’s no shame in that for Arkansas: this is a very good-shooting Oklahoma team.
This was a very 2021 performance. Without Trevon Brazile, the Hogs doubled down on their best two offensive players. Nick Smith had a monstrous 36% usage while Ricky Council was at 25%. No one else that played more than three minutes had a usage above 19%. Smith’s grade is lower than I expected, but he got punished a bit for taking so many possessions (18) to score his 21 points. That’s fine, the Hogs will happily live with that.
While Council created the most net points (+6.8), the advanced stats MVP is once again Makhi Mitchell. Over his last two games, he’s averaging a double-double and hasn’t turned it over once. There was very little dropoff when he exited and Kamani Johnson came in, as Johnson had 5 and 5 and didn’t turn it over either.
For the Sooners, Sherfield was very good due to his scoring, but awful performances from OU’s two highest-graded players for the season – centers Tanner Groves and Sam Godwin – were the Sooners’ undoing.
Highlights
Up Next
The Hogs get a week off and host Bradley next Saturday at Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock. That venue has been a problem for the Hogs in recent years, as they suffered an embarrassing loss to Hofstra last season. Bradley has a good team and will play good defense, so Arkansas better be ready.
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