Arkansas staff continuing to tinker after Auburn loss
Coming off the largest loss in the history of Bud Walton Arena, Arkansas head coach Eric Musselman and his staff are doing everything they can to right the ship before it's too late.
With a 9-5 overall start to the season and the historically bad 83-51 loss to Auburn on Saturday, the metrics for the Razorbacks have them completely out of the NCAA Tournament picture in year five under Musselman.
The Hogs are, however, just one game into SEC play and they have plenty of opportunities to turn things all the way around — something Musselman has had to do with just about every team he's coached in Fayetteville.
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Musselman has continually talked about his own effort and the effort of his staff to try and figure out how to get the 2023-24 Razorbacks to click, and the Head Hog said they spent all Sunday in the office.
"Our staff was in here all day yesterday starting at about 6:30 in the morning many of us — on a Sunday, an off-day," Musselman said Monday. "We’re going to keep going. Some of the text messages have been really cool from former assistant coaches on times we’ve struggled."
The Hogs changed their day before routine ahead of the Auburn game and they even went with a new-look starting lineup. Even still, they are continuing to tinker to figure something out.
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"The day before our game against Auburn, we completely changed the timing of how we did our day before game," Musselman said. "I mean, we changed every part of the routine. We’re not doing normal shell defense. We incorporated five parts of what our opponents do and created a new shell defense."
Musselman has said often that this year's team has no issue with having good practices, but that has clearly not translated to live action. He said that he moved players (he didn't disclose who) to the scout team for the first time as a college head coach.
"We had a great practice this morning, super physical," Musselman said. "I moved players to the scout team today. So we had five players on the scout team. That’s not been the case in the four years that I’ve been here. We’ve always used managers or graduate assistants. But today they had to guard five scholarship players. That’s a different look. We’ll see what happens.
"I mean we had another really good practice. I try to shoot straight with (the media) on everything and try to not have any gray area and to let you know exactly how I feel, whether it’s agreed upon or not. But this team continues to practice really well. Today it was a great practice and the game on Saturday was a really poor performance."
While he said after Saturday's loss that his team doesn't understand what its identity is on either side of the ball, Musselman said he thinks they realize the importance of the next two games at Georgia on Wednesday and at Florida on Saturday.
"I think they understand, I hope they understand, the importance of this two-game road trip," Musselman said. "We know it’s going to be hard to win on the road. We know that we’re going to have to play our A-game on both sides of the ball. This league is too good to not, but this program in the past has done a good job of at some point figuring out things and figuring out the intensity that we need to play with.
"I mean, there’s a lot of former players that have been texting in the last 24-48 hours that have said ‘Hey coach, been there. Figure it out’. So that’s what we’re trying to do."
Not only has Musselman received encouraging words from former players, but former assistant coaches such as David Patrick and Gus Argenal have also reached out.
"Some of the text messages have been really cool from former assistant coaches on times we’ve struggled," Musselman said. "David Patrick sent a long text and Gus Argenal’s been sending text messages. We’re not going to just do the same thing over and over. We’re not going to stop tinkering and try to get better."
Arkansas and Georgia are set for an 8 p.m. CT tipoff Wednesday at Stegeman Coliseum in Athens, Georgia. The game will be broadcast on ESPNU.