HawgBeat - Razorbacks 'moving in the right direction' after Georgia win
The Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team is moving in the right direction following its win over Georgia on Saturday.
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Revenge is a dish best served by the Hoop Hogs, as Arkansas (12-11, 3-7 SEC) earned a 78-75 "get back game" victory against the Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday inside Bud Walton thanks to what appears to be a turnaround in consistency and approach for the Razorbacks.
In its last four matchups — conference games against Kentucky, Missouri, LSU and Georgia — Arkansas has only put on one truly bad performance in a 95-74 road loss to the Bayou Bengals. Besides that, head coach Eric Musselman's squad has been competitive and brought the energy for the full 40 minutes of action.
"Certainly a much better job of getting 50-50 balls," Musselman said after the game. "Even the last few games, in the Kentucky game I thought we did a better job with — we’re moving in the right direction, still got a lot to clean up, still got to get a lot better, but a happy Saturday."
That's not to say everything was perfect, of course. Arkansas' largest lead of the game against Georgia was 12 points in the second half, but an unusually high number of turnovers out of bounds and lapses in defense resulted in a nail-biting finish for the Hogs.
"I liked our new flow offensively, the way we did things," Musselman said. "I really did and I hope the players feel the same way, I don’t know if they do. But I thought offensively, again, the biggest area of improvement for us is not stepping out of bounds.
"I mean, we scored 44 points in the second half and we stepped out of bounds, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life so if we can not step out of bounds, that might give us another 4-8 points."
On the other hand, the Razorbacks shot a scorching-hot 73% from the field in the second half to seal the victory. Similar to Arkansas' one-point home win against Texas A&M earlier in the season, the Hogs just willed themselves to victory when it mattered most.
"We obviously needed to win today," Musselman said. "Offensively and defensively we made some improvement. Obviously we went with a small lineup. Bench scoring was phenomenal, 44-20. So plus 24 bench points. I felt we did a pretty good taking care of the basketball though we stepped out of bounds a lot.
"But all in all happy with the win. Obviously to shoot 73 percent in the second half, 14 of 19. It’s hard to lose a game if you shoot that percentage in a half which they did. They stuck with their 1-3-1 and I thought when we didn’t turn the ball over we did a good job handling that."
Up next, Arkansas will take on the No. 6 Tennesee Volunteers (17-5, 7-2 SEC) on Wednesday inside Bud Walton Arena. The game is set to tip off at 8 p.m. CT and will broadcast on ESPN2.
