It was a game Arkansas absolutely had to have, and they got it by the skin of their teeth. The Razorbacks trailed by as many as 11 points in the first half and took their first lead on a Boogie Fland 3-pointer to make it 74-71 with 1:42 to play. Fland scored Arkansas’ final seven points to secure the win.
Miami has not been very good so far, so this win doesn’t look great from an analytics perspective. But the Hogs outscored the Hurricanes 44-33 in the second half, and a win is a win. Hopefully it jump-starts a run of better play for this team. The Hurricanes will also likely improve, as they had both Nijel Pack and Matthew Cleveland, who have been injured, back for this game.
Grading the Hogs
Our grading system takes the actual net scoring efficiency and subtracts from the opponent’s overall adjusted scoring efficiency. So if our model says that Miami is a +5 team – that is, they are 5 points per 100 possessions better than a perfectly-average Division I team – and Arkansas goes +8 per 100 possessions against them, then the Hogs get a score of +3 for the game. We can do this for both offense and defense as well. The results are normalized to a scale of 0-100, where 100 means your score was in the 100th percentile of all performances by all teams in all games this year.
Arkansas earned a 70 for this game, which is actually their second-worst of the year. Remember, the grade doesn’t know whether you won or lost, just how you performed against the quality of opponent you faced. And the model doesn’t think highly of Miami, so a 3-point win isn’t going to move the needle much.
Here’s Arkansas’ performance by game this year:
You can see that the offense (blue line) was awful to start to the year but has been picking things up. The Hogs earned a perfect 100 for the Maryland-Eastern Shore game. As bad as UMES is, the Hogs still dominated the game to an impressive degree.
You can also see that the model isn’t really dinging the Hogs for either loss, as they earned a 76 against Baylor and an 83 against Illinois. Over a full season, average performances of 80 or more are indicative of an NCAA Tournament team, 85-plus for a team that could make a run, and 90-plus for a championship contender. As you can see, the Hogs are a bit off that pace right now.
Advanced stats
This ended up being a slow-paced game, which probably hurt Arkansas’ offense. As we sort of anticipated in the preview, Miami did a good job of preventing the Razorbacks from getting in transition. That was a concern because transition offense has been the best way the Hogs have scored this year.
Of course, Miami’s poor halfcourt defense ultimately let the Hurricanes down. The Hogs posted an excellent 115.7 efficiency in halfcourt, scoring 59 points on 51 possessions.
Once again, concerns about this roster’s ability to hit 3-pointers seem to have been overblown. The Hogs shot 72% eFG% (that’s 48% raw) and that’s basically all they did well on offense.
So the good news is that the perceived weakness of jump shooting doesn’t look like a weakness. The bad news is that despite that, Arkansas’ offense isn’t great right now. The Hogs don’t attack the rim like you’d expect for a team with so much length and athleticism, so they aren’t generating shots at the rim at a high enough rate. That’s forcing them to settle for less-efficient midrange jumpers, but it’s doing more than that. Less action at the rim means fewer offensive rebounds and fewer shooting fouls drawn. The Hogs attempted just nine free throws against Miami and haven’t rebounded well on offense all year. This offense doesn’t do anything well other than finish the rim chances they do get and, surprisingly, hit 3-point shots.
Defensively, the Hogs kept Miami away from the rim. On a related note, they didn’t foul much and didn’t allow many offensive boards. The main way the Hogs were able to keep the Hurricanes from running away with this game was the perimeter defense. The Hogs closed out well on 3-point shots even though they still allowed too many attempts.
Fland and DJ Wagner were +11 and +10. The Hogs tried to give them breaks by bringing in Billy Richmond and Karter Knox, but that didn’t work out at all. This was the first game all year that we’ve seen the trio of Fland, Wagner, and Nelly Davis all look really good, and that was definitely a positive sign.
For Miami, you can see the clear impact of Pack and Cleveland, who have each been hurt and missed time. Hopefully for the Hogs’ resume, their health will cause Miami to be a better team from here on in.
Highlights
Up next
Arkansas is back at home Saturday for a tuneup against UTSA. Then the Hogs have a huge game against Michigan on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden. They really need to win that one if they want to have a good resume (and good momentum) heading into conference play.
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.