Arkansas’ attempt to right the season ended in disaster with an 83-65 thrashing at the hands of Missouri. Missouri used an 18-0 run in the first quarter of the game that provided the final margin.
Missouri likes to pressure, gamble, and be physical, and the Razorbacks looked shell-shocked by the Tigers’ frenetic pressing and trapping early on. The Tigers also benefitted from a friendly whistle that lot a lot of contact go.
I remarked during the game that if SEC officials always called games this way, Mike Anderson would be seeking his seventh national championship with the Hogs this year. That’s only a slight exaggeration.
The bad news is that Arkansas is now 0-5 in conference play for the first time since the 1985-86 season. The good news is that season was also with a first-year coach: Nolan Richardson, who won his sixth conference game and then a whole lot more games after that.
After the LSU game, we discussed how Arkansas’ offensive scheme puts its playmakers in a bad spot. Poor spacing and no attempt to establish a 3-point threat mean defenses can collapse on the offense inside the arc, creating shots with a high degree of difficulty.
Maybe this post can serve as a balance to that, because it’s not all scheme. The Hogs have serious execution issues as well on both ends of the floor. Mizzou’s intensity on defense caused guys like Boogie Fland to settle for way too many congested jump shots, and the Hogs were extremely lax with the ball throughout the game. Defensively, it was worse. Bad rotations gave Missouri a ton of open 3-pointers and paths to the basket.
Nelly Davis has been a bust, but it’s probably fair to call Jonas Aidoo and DJ Wagner busts as well, given the hype around them coming in. Wagner is fine defensively, but John Calipari’s faith in him over two seasons now has not been rewarded on offense at all. And Aidoo hasn’t made Arkansas’ interior defense dominant at all, and that was the whole reason he was so highly-rated out of the portal.
Calipari is going to need to rethink his transfer portal evaluation process, because this has been disappointing. He had good pickups at Kentucky, like Oscar Tshiebwe and Antonio Reeves, so maybe this year’s disaster class was a product of the quick transition from Lexington to Fayetteville, and his staff having a whole year to prepare for next year’s roster will pay off. If you want optimism, that’s a place to start.
Advanced stats
For the second straight game, the Hogs won the battle in transition but got destroyed in halfcourt on both ends of the floor. The Hogs scored on only 34% of their own halfcourt possessions but allowed Mizzou to score more than one point per possession in halfcourt. Not great!
While the Hogs struggled around the the rim against LSU, this time, they couldn’t hit any jump shots at all, and they also had a tough time getting to the free throw line. And while Missouri has really struggled with defensive rebounding, the Hogs snagged just 23% of their missed shots.
There are absolutely zero positive takeaways here. Maybe this team will improve – they’d better or something like 2-16 in conference play is possible – but this just looked like a bad basketball team on Saturday. This is not what Arkansas fans expected at all.
If there’s anything positive on an individual level, it was nice to see Big Z get going at least. He posted a double-double and was just minus-seven in 30 minutes. I’ll take a closer look at his numbers in a future post, because he’s been better than Aidoo per most advanced stats this year.