HawgBeat - Musselman looks to NBA to help ball movement and pace
Arkansas head coach Eric Musselman implemented a new rule to promote ball movement and a faster pace of play.
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The Arkansas basketball team is not off to the start it wanted. A neutral site loss in Tulsa to Oklahoma over the weekend dropped the Razorbacks' record to 6-4 as they still sit outside the top 100 in the NET, coming in at No. 103.
Throughout the early part of the season, Arkansas has shown multiple areas of concern in its play, including on the offensive side of the ball. Head coach Eric Musselman has implemented a new rule to try and account for it.
"We put in a rule where it's a point-five rule," forward Jalen Graham said. "So, if you catch the ball you only have .5 seconds to dribble, pass, or shoot. But you've got to get it out your hands. Just moving without the ball, too. A lot of split screens and trying to move without the ball to try to get everybody going."
While half a second does not seem like much time to be able to make decisions with the ball, Graham isn't too worried about the speed.
"I mean, we play with pace to begin with," Graham said. "So it's just move about spacing the floor and then moving without the ball. It involves your teammates that don't have the ball to be able to move and get open. As long as everybody is playing together, it's not as hard as you think. But it makes the game more fun, to be honest."
One of the biggest issues for Arkansas offensively has been a reliance on isolation, which has slowed the pace of play and provided stretches of inconsistent scoring.
"That's not by design (to play slower)," Musselman said Wednesday. "We want to play with pace...We would like more fast break points. We would like to score in transition more than we have."
As far as the .5 rule goes, fans and media alike can judge if it's helped the problem on Saturday.
"You guys evaluate that on Saturday, who holds it more than .5 (seconds), now that (Graham) told you our San Antonio Spurs rule of .5," Musselman said. "I never brought it up, so it's good when a player uses coaching verbiage, so I'm really happy that Jalen recognized that.
"I'm glad he shared it with you guys. Now everybody can watch and see who holds it more than .5. I mean, in all honesty, it's just meant to try to get the ball to move more. It's a little bit, you know... it's hard to not hold the ball more than .5, but we certainly don't want 16 dribbles on one possession."
According to ShotQuality, Arkansas currently runs 8% of its offense through isolation, ranking No. 55 in the country, and 11% of its offense comes in transition, ranking No. 155.
KenPom also shows the Razorbacks with an adjusted tempo of 70.7 (possessions per 40 minutes). That would rank as the second slowest Arkansas team under Eric Musselman, being just slightly faster than last year's 69.6 possessions per 40 minutes.
Arkansas will face the Lipscomb Bison on Saturday inside Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock. Tipoff is set for 5 p.m. CT and the game will be televised on the SEC Network+.
