We took a brief break from posting advanced stats due to personal life business and – mostly – bad basketball, but suddenly the Hogs are 3-2 in their last five games and are at least no longer embarrassing to watch.
Just as the bad 2023 football team at least managed a historic moment – beating Florida in Gainesville for the first time ever – this basketball team can now add something to its win over Duke: a 42-point outburst by Khalif Battle that ranks among the best offensive performances in school history. It’s the most points by a single player in a single game since Rotnei Clarke went for 51 on poor Alcorn State in 2009. The Hogs hadn’t had a 40-point performance since Mason Jones did it twice in 2020.
Here’s a look at the stats plus a couple interesting notes on the all-season trends.
Advanced Stats
This was a slow-paced game, as Arkansas has given up on trying to play fast. Both teams took around 18 seconds per possession, which is really slow. That means Arkansas had to post an insane 133.3 offensive efficiency in order to hit 88 points. The Hogs scored on 61% of offensive possessions, including 61% of halfcourt possessions, which is bonkers. Granted, Arkansas was basically playing a mid-major defense (Vanderbilt, coming up this week, is the only SEC team that’s worse), but it’s still pretty impressive.
The slower pace is part of how Arkansas has (sort of) turned its season around. The Hogs were still trying to move fast in non-conference, but that aggressiveness caused them to get boatraced in the transition game against good teams. Once they gave up trying to play fast and force turnovers, they’ve found that they are a competent halfcourt team at both ends. Not good, mind you, but competent.
The Hogs created more shot chances, got to the free throw line, and had a guy get hot shooting. That’s a pretty good formula. Mizzou avoided turnovers and drew fouls, but didn’t shoot particularly well.
Battle did all the heavy lifting for Arkansas, posting a 31% usage rate in 38 minutes. His 42 points came on just 21 shot chances (15 field goal attempts and six trips to the line) for an insane 100% True Shooting (explanation: if you treat each of his 21 shot chances as a two-point field goal attempt, he’d have to shoot 100% in order to score 42 points). Toss in his zero turnovers, and he only had 21 personal possessions, so that’s a 200.0 offensive efficiency (Arkansas averaged two points for every offensive possession that Battle ended). I don’t have historical numbers handy, but I would guess that 100% TS% and 200.0 offensive efficiency have to be among the best performances in school history for high-volume games (10+ shot chances), if not the very best.
Note Devo Davis with nine rebounds, six assists, and a team-high +18. More on that in a second. And the Hogs really won this thing in Makhi Mitchell’s 28 minutes: they were +15 there and even in the 12 minutes he was off the floor.
Battle bouncing back
In terms of our xRAPM player grades, Battle was Arkansas’ best player through the first four games. After the Bahamas trip, he was eventually overtaken by Tramon Mark, and we had Mark-Battle as the top two for the last few non-conference games and most of the SEC season. After Trevon Brazile got hurt, Makhi Mitchell and Jalen Graham had breakouts (we discussed Brazile holding other bigs back previously), and a few games ago, Mitchell and Graham passed Battle for second and third place.
But this performance has vaulted Battle back ahead of Mitchell and into second among starter-level guys, though the numbers Arkansas is a four-man team: Mark, Graham, Battle, and Mitchell are solid SEC starters, and everyone else is way back.
Here are the Hogs’ top players by xRAPM, which measures total points contributed per 100 possessions on the floor:
- Tramon Mark +6.3
- Jalen Graham +4.1
- Khalif Battle +3.3
- Makhi Mitchell +3.0
- Layden Blocker +0.5
- Chandler Lawson 0
- Devo Davis -2.5
- Trevon Brazile -2.5
- Keyon Menifield -3.2
- El Ellis -3.7
- Jeremiah Davenport -4.1
You can see the huge dropoff after Mitchell, and that’s been Arkansas’ biggest problem. Playing Mitchell and Graham together isn’t always doable depending on the matchup, so already you’ve got at least one and often two holes in the lineup. Those two holes are another small guard and a power forward, so those were supposed to be Devo and Brazile, but they’ve had disappointing seasons, hence the problem.
We’ve discussed how there were some misevaluations in the transfer portal, and you can see that in the 9-10-11 guys on this list. We knew from their previous stops that Menifield, Ellis, and Davenport were total defensive liabilities – our guess was that Muss and staff figured they could coach up defense, and they were wrong – so it’s unsurprising to see them at the very bottom. But Mark has been as-advertised – maybe even slightly better than expected on offense – and Battle has been pretty good as well, if a bit inconsistent. So the biggest flop was not the portal haul but Devo and Brazile, who were thought to be two of the three best players on the team coming in.
Maybe we could have seen that coming into the year. Brazile was coming off an ACL tear, and his chaotic, leggy style of play is negatively affected by either unable to jump with explosiveness (due to injury) or being afraid to (due to fear of injury). There was no guarantee he’d be the player we saw flashes of in 2023. Unfortunately, we saw only flashes again early this season, then nothing. Now coming back from another injury, it seems unlikely he’ll suddenly turn things around this year. He could return next season, but I have no idea whether or not he will.
With Devo, it’s hard to tell. My best guess is that he’s just a career role player and that’s where he shines the most. Sure, he’ll always have that 25-point game against Kansas, but for the most part, he’s been a good team defender who is very low-usage on offense. Asking him to do any more than that is too much. Since returning from being away from the team, he’s actually jumped from 10th to 7th in xRAPM, and you can see his value in his +18 against Mizzou, a game where he seemed to clearly accept being a minor role player.
Up Next
Since the SEC Tournament awards an auto-bid to its winner, the Hogs’ NCAA chances are not dead until they lose there. Their at-large chances may not be totally dead either, though that path is highly unlikely. They would need to win out, which includes high-Q1 road wins over Kentucky and Alabama over the next two Saturdays. That would get them squarely on the bubble, and they would need at least one and probably two wins in the SEC Tournament to have a shot. And even then, it’s not a guarantee. It’s nice to have hope, but it’s hard to see that happening.
Any path to a postseason starts one game at a time, and the next one is very winnable, as Vanderbilt, which sports a 2-12 SEC record, comes to Fayetteville. The Commodores have beaten the Hogs in back-to-back seasons, as Jerry Stackhouse’s offense has mostly toasted the Hogs’ defense. But Stack’s team this year can’t play defense at all, so it might not matter. Model pick: Arkansas 77, Vanderbilt 68.
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