HawgBeat - In Muss' Words: What's wrong with Arkansas basketball?
HawgBeat uses comments from Eric Musselman to determine what's wrong with the Arkansas basketball team.
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Since starting the season 9-0 and rising to No. 10 in the rankings, Arkansas has lost four of its last five games. Not only have the Razorbacks dropped out of the AP Poll, but they're currently not even on the bubble.
The rough patch includes losses to Hofstra in North Little Rock and Vanderbilt at Bud Walton Arena. The past five games have featured different rotations, inconsistencies and some specific areas of struggle.
What does head coach Eric Musselman see as the major issues during that time?
Let's go back over some postgame press conferences from the past five games and look for specific areas Musselman himself focused on. We've also provided some deeper context to each of those issues.
Despite it being a major problem, team shooting is not on this list after some improvements and because the other issues in this piece are much more relevant to the team’s problems at this moment.
Rebounding
What was viewed as a strength through the first nine games of the season has become a major weakness for the Razorbacks that Coach Musselman has addressed on multiple occasions.
Heading into the Oklahoma game, Arkansas had been out-rebounded just once - in a win over Little Rock in which the Trojans had a plus-1 advantage on the glass. Arkansas was plus-9.5 on the glass through nine games, but has since lost the rebounding battle in four of the last five games.
Against Oklahoma, Musselman was frustrated with the team’s performance as a whole, and rightfully so. In his postgame presser he mentioned numerous aspects of the game specifically in a string of critiques that began with rebounding.
“We got out-toughed today to be quite honest," Musselman said. "We didn’t rebound like we’re capable of, we turned the ball over too much.” He mentioned rebounding in passing towards the end of the presser, as well, simply saying, “We didn’t rebound the ball.”
Oklahoma came in with a game plan designed to limit Arkansas’ success on the glass and it worked, as they won the rebounding battle 36-29. The Razorbacks had only one offensive rebounds while the Sooners managed five.
It was much of the same against Hofstra, as the Razorbacks again were minus-7 on the boards, this time 40-33. Being only the second instance of Arkansas losing the rebounding battle in noticeable fashion, Musselman briefly acknowledged rebounding again following the loss to the Pride that included plenty of other problems.
“Rebounding has been a strength,” Musselman said. “Tonight we lose on the glass by seven. So again we’ve got to get a lot better.”
After a win over Elon where the Razorbacks got back on track in the rebounding column with a plus-14 margin, Arkansas was right back in the negatives in its conference opener at Mississippi State. After the third time in four games Arkansas was out-rebounded by at least seven, rebounding was officially a weakness and not a strength.
“I thought Mississippi State was really, really physical,” Musselman said. “Brooks is 6-foot-10, he had 10 boards, obviously (and) you look at Tolu Smith’s 4 on the glass, and then their backup center came in and had 5 offensive rebounds - Javian Davis is one of the best offensive rebound players per minute.
“And then for us, the interior, Trey Wade played 22 minutes and didn’t have a rebound. Stanley only had two defensive rebounds, both of those guys played the four spot for us, so we’ve got to rebound across the board better, especially up front.”
The Bulldogs finished plus-8 on the glass, 39-31. They also won on the offensive glass 15-11 and more than doubled Arkansas’ second chance points 14-6.
After a week off Arkansas had a chance to come home to Bud Walton Arena for a conference home-opening win over Vanderbilt, but the Commodores played spoiler to that, in large part due to their rebounding.
Again out-rebounded by a margin of seven, 35-28, Arkansas looked lost on the glass to a smaller Vanderbilt squad.
(Story continues in next post)
