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Hoops RECAP: Arkansas lays an egg in Tuscaloosa (includes full box score)

Don't know if anyone would want to read a recap of that performance, but my story has quotes from Muss, stats that paint a picture of just how bad it was + a full box score and postgame interviews...

Vance Jackson

Vance looked like a very confident well-rounded shooter/scorer against the lesser competition of MVSU, and since then he's scoreless with 3 turnovers and 1 assist in 29 minutes.

Was he a streaky player at New Mexico as well? Just wondering if there is any red flag here given the lack of productive minutes over the past two games.

Oof - some takeaways

First, the hard truth. Even with Justin Smith this game is a fat loss. The team looked scared, gave very little effort from the tip, and honesty didn’t look well-prepared at all. Smith wouldn’t have fixed all of that.

Second, you have to start Jaylin over Connor. I’m not even against CV playing because he can provide some things for this team, but continuing to start him in matchups against teams that exploit his biggest weakness is puzzling to me. Bring him in off the bench for quick hitters (if he’s hitting his shots) in games he matches up terribly. Jaylin grabbed 9 boards and 7 points. Dude can play.

The defense has taken a significant step back from a year ago. Obviously the team ran into a buzzsaw tonight, but there are a ton of scoring offenses in the SEC now. We play the best one on Saturday. Defense kept an undermanned roster afloat last season but is the downfall of a legitimately talented roster.

That being said, the roster is also not as talented, nor as deep as we thought. There is no consistent inside presence, especially without Smith. There are no men in the paint. The guards are inconsistent as anything, too. And thanks to Smith’s injury, the team can really only afford to go 7 deep most nights. Not far off from last year.

There’s still talent and a lot of basketball to be played, but I think this is just a very inconsistent basketball team with very little chemistry who struggles to regularly put forth the effort to compete. Not trying to overreact, and I think this is still potentially an NCAA Tournament team. This is a loss I had projected, even (in my pre-conference projections), but I didn’t anticipate giving up a 40-6 run in the first half and the Head Coach delegating duties to the assistants. That’s the concerning part. Not the loss, but the way the loss happened.

The team did show some fight to get it down to 13 at one point, but at the end of the day, that was just some of the worst basketball I’ve seen in some time. No transition defense, no effort, pump faking against nothing, driving into herds of defenders, acting like they’d never seen a press before, etc. Just bad.

After saying all this, with as bipolar a basketball team as this seems to be, I expect to either win or get run out the gym against Bama Saturday.

Pruitt flying around rerecruiting his own guys

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“In an effort to settle the To'oto'o families concerns, Pruitt and members of his staff are on their way to the west coast.

Attorney’s Michael Glazier and Kyle Skillman have spent the week interviewing multiple Vol coaches including Jeremy Pruitt as a part of their investigation. We are told that some of the interviews lasted in excess of 4 hours. Pruitt met with them for over six hours on Thursday.”

Hoops Incredible, mind-blowing stat (now includes a thought from Muss)

Guys, I've checked my math on this like three times because I can't believe it, but...

Moses Moody, Jaylin Williams and Davonte Davis were on the court together for 19 minutes against LSU. In those 19 minutes, Arkansas outscored the Tigers by 17 points. ... That means in the 21 minutes when only two or one of the freshmen - or none of them - were on the floor, the Razorbacks were outscored by 33 points. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that stat.

It doesn't seem to be a fluke, either...

In the blowout win over Georgia on Saturday, that trio was plus-27 in 15 minutes and 42 seconds together. All other combinations that featured 2, 1 or 0 of the freshmen were just plus-3 in 24 minutes and 18 seconds.

They didn't play together at all against Tennessee (a 5-point loss), but did get 6 minutes and 48 seconds together vs. Missouri and they were just minus-1. When they weren't on the floor together, Arkansas was minus-12 in 33 minutes and 12 seconds.

It was a tiny sample size, but the trio was plus-3 in 1:45 at Auburn. All other combinations were plus-9 in 38:15.

So in SEC play...

Moody/Williams/Davis together: plus-46 in 43:15 (works out to plus-42.5 per 40 minutes)
Not together: minus-38 in 156:45 (works out to minus-9.7 per 40 minutes)

Might be nothing... Might be something. Just had to share it because I am just sitting here mind blown.

Hoops Hogs down Gators in bounce back performance WBB

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – No. 17 Arkansas (11-4, 2-3) bounced back in Bud Walton Arena on Thursday night, holding off Florida (7-6, 0-5), 84-80. This win was a team win, as four different Hogs got into double-figures, while Head Coach Mike Neighbors’ Hogs rebounded at the same rate as the Gators, pulling down 34 rebounds.

Redshirt senior guard Chelsea Dungee took over in this one, lighting up the scoreboard to the tune of 33 points, a new season-high. She did a ton of her damage at the free throw line, hitting all 17 of her free throw attempts, matching her career-high in freebies made (17-19, Auburn, 2/7/19), which is a program record. Redshirt senior guard Destiny Slocum continued her strong play for the Hogs on Thursday, scoring 17 points and grabbing five rebounds. Amber Ramirez and Makayla Daniels also scored in double-figures, notching 12 and 11 points, respectively.

TURNING POINT

Arkansas held the lead for almost the entire game, maintaining the edge on the scoreboard for 37 of the game’s 40 minutes. While the Gators’ defense stepped up in the second half, the Razorbacks never allowed Florida to take the lead after the game’s early stages.

Arkansas exploded for 52 points in the first half, shooting 50 percent from three-point range and knocking down 16 of its 18 free throw attempts. Dungee put up 20 points in the opening two frames, and Slocum added 13 on 6-8 shooting going into the intermission.

The second half was a different story, though, as both teams failed to continue their offensive performances in the final 20 minutes. Both teams were bitten by the turnover bug in the fourth quarter, with the hometown Hogs committing five in the final minutes and the Gators losing seven possessions themselves. Despite a monster game from Lavender Briggs, who dropped 41 points, Arkansas’s steady play at the charity stripe helped put the game on ice, as Dungee went a perfect 4-4 from the line and Taylah Thomas added a free throw late as well.
HOG HIGHLIGHTS

Dungee scored 30+ for the tenth time in her career, and the second time this season.
  • That is the most games ever of 30+ in program history.
  • Dungee becomes the first Razorback to hit 17+ free throws in a game twice in a career.
  • Senior forward Taylah Thomas led the Hogs on the glass, pulling down eight rebounds.
  • Daniels was supremely efficient in the game, hitting all five of her shot attempts. She was also a team-high +13.
NEXT TIME OUT
Arkansas will head east to take on No. 5 South Carolina in Columbia on Monday. The matchup will air on ESPN2 and is set to tipoff at 6 p.m. CT.

How much will we improve on offense in 2021?

Offense
Kendal Briles is heading into his second season as OC for the Hogs. Kendal is used to having people load a uhaul right now as he travels to his next coaching stop. He said when he took the Arkansas job that he was looking for stability and so far he is in fact staying for 2021. The only place he has ever done this before, was at Baylor under his father. Even that was stopped by the scandal at Baylor.

So what do we expect from a second year of Briles? Briles and the veer and shoot are pretty easy and learnable schematically, but when you add the pace that the offense runs, it leads to a lot of miscommunications, misreads by the QB, and missed assignments and routes everywhere else. When going back and reviewing the film and really focusing on each play on offense it was glaring the amount of opportunities the Hogs missed. Opportunities where Feleipe Franks made the wrong read in the RPO that could've been a big gain or receivers running the same route with open space where they were supposed to be or linemen pull the wrong direction/ missing assignments or tight ends missing blocking assignments in the split zone that probably spring Boyd or Smith off to the races.

We got much better at execution, at a high speed as the season progressed. I counted 23 missed or busted plays against Georgia, I counted 13 against Missouri. Obviously the kids aren't perfect, signals get mixed and everything else, but in Briles time at Baylor where the system was completely installed the most mistakes I ever caught were 10 in a game and that was with a back up qb that came in mid game.

The Hogs were horrific on 3rd down. I think that will be the biggest area of improvement. We are going to make fewer mistakes in our assignments and reads because of the knowledge returning, so it will lead to more success on 1st and 2nd down. Ultimately, leading to more success on 3rd and way less 3 and outs.

Like Pittman said, we have to get bigger and stronger on the line, which we will obviously do this off season. This will allow us to be much more efficient in the the red zone and in the run game in general.

In ppg in 2019 we averaged 21.4 which ranked 110 in the nation. In 2020 in Briles first year we jumped to 25.7 which ranked 86th. That was with out the fluff of NC games on the schedule and playing SEC defenses every week. I fully expect the Hogs to improve that stat by at least 7 points in 2021 which would put us as a top 40 offense in the nation, something that hasn't been done since 2015 and before that, the Petrino days.

Bigger, stronger, more consistent, and more understanding! I think we see our first 1,000 yard receiver since Cobi hamilton with Treylon Burks. Running games should be worlds better but I don't think we have a 1,000 yard rusher on the team, most likely committee work unless some one emerges as a work horse.

Hoops How Hogs have bounced back after double-digit losses under Musselman

Wednesday night was just the fifth time Arkansas has lost by double-digits under Eric Musselman. Here's a look at how his teams have responded following those kind of losses...
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