Another year, another Elite Eight ending.

Best I can tell, Hog fans are absolutely not taking this for granted, which is good. Arkansas got out of the first weekend in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1995 and 1996, and made the Elite Eight in consecutive seasons for just fourth time in school history and first since 1994 and 1995. The stage is set for a monster 2023 season.

But it’s still never fun when it ends, and it definitely was not fun to lose to much-hated Duke.

Quick Recap

• In the preview, our three keys to the game were 1) winning at the rim, 2) getting into transition, and 3) preparing for a shootout with good shot selection and no bad unforced turnovers. The Hogs failed on two and a half of these.
• The battle at the rim was a disaster and will be discussed in detail below.
• Arkansas tried to get in transition on offense, but the Hogs picked a bad time to have one of their least-efficient transition games of the year.
• The shot selection actually looks pretty good. The Hogs got high-quality shots and very few of them were forced. The good shots mostly didn’t go in, which has been the issue all season. There were too many unforced turnovers, but not enough to play a major role in the game.

Team Stats

Confused? Check out the advanced stats glossary to learn more about the stats cited here.

We mentioned that Duke is dead-last in field goal rate allowed, and that the Hogs may need to top the 93.5 FGAR that they got against Gonzaga. That didn’t quite happen, but the Hogs did create more shot opportunities, just not quite enough.

Meanwhile, that’s a whole lot of red on Duke’s side, which means bad for the Hogs. Let’s walk through it.

Transition game = nightmare

It’s not normal to see the Hogs lose the transition game. But that’s what happened. We discussed Duke’s vulnerable transition defense in the preview:

Duke allows opponents to get in transition too much. When they can contain the opponent in halfcourt, they are better off, ranking 46th in halfcourt efficiency defense.

Texas Tech — not an elite offensive team — had a good offense game against Duke due largely to transition. The Red Raiders only got in transition on 21% of possessions, but they had a staggering 71% floor percentage and a 150.0 efficiency on those possessions. In North Carolina’s 94-81 win at Cameron in the season finale, the Tar Heels ran on 24% of possessions and posted a 138.9 efficiency and 61% floor. Ditto for Virginia Tech in the ACC title game: just 14% transition rate (the Hokies don’t run at all), but 188.9 efficiency (!) and 89% floor (!!!).

Arkansas ran on 25% of possessions, which is about what you’d expect, but the 100.0 efficiency and 41% is absolutely not. The Hogs’ opponent-adjusted season averages there were 131.0 and 58%.

I’m afraid this line from the preview, which had me worried, came true:

Duke sometimes looks like a collection of offensive-minded players who are being forced to play defense, so they can appear undisciplined and unfocused. The danger of playing a team like that is that if the game tightens, their focus and intensity might pick up suddenly.

There’s probably something to the fact that Duke has a crazy amount of talent (all five starters might play in the NBA, and at least one is a first-rounder) and has extreme motivation to play their best ball right now. The loss to North Carolina on “Coach K Day” and the loss in the ACC title game weren’t really a big deal compared to the NCAA Tournament.

Duke definitely looked more athletic in transition. After the first few minutes, they looked like they had more energy than the Hogs. I don’t know if fatigue was an issue for Arkansas, but the Hogs looked fatigued compared to Duke, and Eric Musselman seemed to notice this too, giving longer-than-normal first-half breathers to some key guys.

If you had told me before the game that Arkansas would post a halfcourt efficiency of 100.0 (the Hogs’ season average), I would probably say the Hogs win. I definitely did not think the Hogs would have the same efficiency in halfcourt and in transition.

At the rim = nightmare

Okay, now we have to have a brief discussion on defensive strategy.

Most defenses fall into one of three types: man, zone, and gap defenses that are somewhere in between. The two big questions on defense related to shot selection are how do you defend the perimeter, and how do you defend the rim.

In a zone, you close off driving and passing lanes inside the perimeter, forcing opponents to take a lot of outside shots. Pure zones (like Syracuse under Jim Boeheim) have to live with a high volume of 3-point attempts against them, but they are satisfied with this because they can prevent shots at the rim from even happening. This defense will always be vulnerable to an opponent getting hot from 3. This is why Syracuse is so unpredictable in the NCAA Tournament: because 3-point shooting is unpredictable and they are willing to live and die by how opponents shoot. If the Orange draw a bunch of opponents that go cold from downtown, they can make a run to the Final Four no matter their seed. Or they could lose in the first round to a hot-shooting foe.

In a pure man-to-man defense (like Duke’s), you can be aggressive and/or switch on the perimeter to prevent open outside shots. This will mean that opponents don’t shoot a ton of 3-pointers against you, but it will allow them inside the arc. Simply letting opponents inside the arc is a dangerous proposition: it’s scary to simply let opponents get a higher-percentage shot against you. So man teams usually need some kind of rim protector to keep opponents from shooting well close to the rim. That’s where we get the difference between shot share and shot percentage. The first refers to whether you take the shot at all, the second refers to whether the shots you do take go in.

Man defenses allow a lot of shots at the rim but try and defend them well. Duke is 252nd in defensive rim share, but 46th in shooting defense at the rim. You can get looks at the rim, but they won’t go in at a good rate.

Gap scheme defenses, like the pack-line defense and the no-middle defense that we’ve discussed before, are between man and zone and have elements of both. Pack lines are more like zones, and no-middles are closer to man. I don’t know all the specifics of Arkansas’ defense — the Hogs use a lot of different looks — but it’s mostly a gap scheme and probably falls somewhere between a no-middle and a pure man.

This is where Arkansas has an issue. The Hogs are mostly a man-ish defense but don’t have overwhelming size or a rim protector. Without a rim protector, it is very difficult to prevent opponents from making shots at the rim: Arkansas entered the Duke game 202nd in shooting defense at the rim. Instead, Arkansas uses help defense and aggressive treatment of ball screens to prevent opponents from getting rim shots in the first place. The Hogs are 60th in defensive shot share at the rim and have done a great job throughout the tournament of limiting high-percentage looks.

It simply didn’t work against Duke. The Blue Devils’ motion offense isn’t overly dependent on ball screens and uses a ton of isolation looks that made it hard for the Hogs to help outside the lane. I mean, look at the spacing Duke used to isolate Arkansas defenders one-on-one:

Umude doesn’t do a terrible job here: the shot actually going in was more of a great offensive play, but the schematic part here is that Duke’s spacing combined with aggressive penetration meant that Arkansas couldn’t help (look at Au’Diese Toney trying to), which is what the Hogs want to do.

Duke used these NBA-style screen-and-curls to tremendous effect:

This isn’t perfectly defended by Notae, but it’s defended pretty well. The bigger issue is that you’re asking a 6’1 guy who isn’t a defensive specialist to stop a 6’6 projected lottery pick.

Once Duke was able to get past Arkansas’ perimeter, this game became a battle of Duke’s 5th-ranked rim shooting offense and Arkansas’ 202nd-ranked rim shooting defense. The game then went as you might expect given those numbers: Duke took nearly half its shots at the rim and made 68% of those.

I wrote this in the preview:

When you play Duke, you’re asking for an old-school game at the rim. Duke’s offense attacks the rim and its defense funnels you into the rim. This game will be won or lost within about six feet of the basket. Arkansas needs to use its physicality on offense to attack Duke’s rim protector and either draw fouls or scared defense. Defensively, the Hogs will have to deny layups, dunks, and putbacks. This is absolutely a game where Jaylin Williams has to show out on both ends.

Williams did his best, but again, he’s not really a shot blocker and Duke had too much size and athleticism in the paint. There is no obvious strategy Arkansas could have gone for here; I guess I was hoping that Eric Musselman and staff could pull some kind of brilliant defensive rabbit out of their hats.

From an X’s and O’s standpoint, Eric Musselman is one of the best coaches in the country, especially on defense. But strategy only takes you so far, and sometimes you have the talent in order to win. This was one of those times. Muss loves a team full of 6’6 and 6’7 guys, and to beat a team that plays like Duke, your 6’6 and 6’7 guys have to be better than theirs. That will be the case in future years, starting next year, but it wasn’t quite the case for this year’s squad, who played above their talent level in big games all season. That’s why there’s really no sense in being disappointed in the team’s play. They did about all they could do here.

Player Stats

Duke’s balance was just too much. Arkansas switched up defensive assignments a few times but it didn’t matter. Despite Jeremy Roach being Duke’s best point guard for most of the late-season, the Hogs actually hounded him into a rough game, but Trevor Keels stepped up and led Duke in APM.

For the Hogs, ugh. Williams was definitely the MVP: his +9.9 APM was the best by far and the Hogs were actually even with Duke while he was on the floor. That 8-0 Duke run at the end of the first half happened with Williams on the bench. Notae had a rough game: minus-18 in 35 minutes (the Hogs were +9 in the five minutes he was on the bench… though most of that was at the end of the game after he had fouled out and the game was decided).

Up Next

Arkansas’ season ends at 28-9. That’s the most wins in an Arkansas season since 1995.

The offseason should unfold quickly:

• First is who comes back: Jaylin Williams has NBA options, while Notae and Toney have another year of eligibility should they choose to use it. Devo Davis and Kamani Johnson should be back.
• Second is who transfers out: KK Robinson, Jaxson Robinson, Chance Moore, and Connor Vanover failed to crack the rotation this year. I assume the staff has given or will give them an idea of what their prospects for next season look like. Hard to believe that at least one if not two of those guys decide to move on to find playing time elsewhere.
• Third is whether or not 5-star point guard Anthony Black commits. He will announce on Monday. His decision will obviously significantly impact how the Hogs approach that position. The Hogs’ 2nd-ranked recruiting class is loaded at shooting guard, combo guard, and small forward, but assuming Notae leaves, the point guard position is somewhat unclear.
• After the first three things shake out, that will leave the Hogs with between zero and three scholarships to use on the portal. If Williams leaves, getting a big man is of utmost importance. Even if he doesn’t, if the Hogs don’t add someone, they’ll be asking 6’7 Jordan Walsh to be the only real option at the 4. Walsh will be an elite defender and a huge upgrade at the position, but that’s asking a lot of a freshman.

A full-season recap will be out soon as we transition into the offseason and start to shift the focus to baseball.

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