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FAYETTEVILLE — Despite also being a four-star recruit, Davonte Davis had not seen the floor nearly as much as his fellow freshmen through Arkansas’ first four games.

Given an opportunity with extended minutes Wednesday night, though, the Jacksonville native led the Razorbacks in scoring as they cruised to a 79-44 win over Southern to improve to 5-0 on the season.

Davis scored the final 10 points of the game and finished with a team-high 14 points. The 6-foot-3 guard also added seven rebounds and two assists in his 16 minutes.

"Coming into the game not knowing how many minutes I'll play, whenever I'm out there I'm just going to play my hardest and try to do whatever it takes to help the team win,” Davis said.

During the last four minutes, Davis made a couple of jumpers in the paint, knocked down a three-pointer and made three free throws, with one coming after a jumper for a traditional three-point play.

Head coach Eric Musselman said he believes a performance like that is “phenomenal” for Davis’ confidence moving forward, especially considering he had played just 27 total minutes in two games entering the night.

“Devo has not flinched since the day he stepped on campus,” Musselman said. “It has not been easy for him. He’s been behind a lot of players. He’s slowly moving ahead of players because of his ability in practice to not flinch, to work.”

Although seeing Davis lead the team in scoring may have surprised some, his teammates were not. He had already established himself as a “great loose ball getter,” according to Musselman, and showed he brought other things to the table Wednesday night.

“The way Devo played tonight is very impressive, but it ain't shocking to me because I know what Devo Davis can do,” Desi Sills said. “He's an energy guy that's willing to guard the best (offensive player), but you can see he can also score the ball.”

Scheduled just two days earlier as a replacement for the Tulsa game that was postponed, the win improves Arkansas to 48-0 all-time against current members of the SWAC - including 3-0 against Southern - with a 30.4-point average margin of victory.

Much like the season-opening win over Mississippi Valley State, this one was over almost as soon as it started.

The Razorbacks won the tip, Sills knocked down an open three-pointer just 20 seconds into the game and they were off to the races.

Jalen Tate blew by his defender for a dunk a few minutes later, forcing the Jaguars to call a timeout, but Connor Vanover came up with a steal on the ensuring possession. That led to a fast break dunk by Justin Smith, who posterized Micah Bradford on his way to an old-fashioned three-point play.

That pushed Arkansas’ lead to double digits, where he remained the rest of the game.

Southern threatened to make it a game with a 6-0 spurt to get back within 10 midway through the first half, but a couple of quick layups by JD Notae ended the run and sparked a 17-0 outburst by Arkansas.

Six different Razorbacks scored during the stretch, while the Jaguars missed 11 straight shots.

An offensive board and put-back dunk by Moses Moody - who, by scoring 12 points Wednesday, has reached double figures in all five games to start his career - made it a 27-point game and it looked like it might get ugly.

However, the Razorbacks had a slow end to the half. They mustered just two points on 1 of 5 shooting over the final three minutes, with Tate making a jumper for their only bucket, and Arkansas led 42-20 at the break.

Although he failed to score in the first half, Vanover’s presence was certainly felt, as he had 7 rebounds, 3 blocks and 3 steals. Arkansas was plus-29 in the 16 minutes he was on the floor, but minus-7 in the four minutes he was on the bench.

It was easy to see that Southern struggled with his 7-foot-3 frame down low, as he altered several more shots that didn’t show up in the box score.

“His size changes the game and he plays the right way,” Musselman said. “He’s very, very good offensively out on the perimeter of being a guy that can trail, make a three, throw-and-chase, run a dribble handoff. I think the guys love playing with Connor.”

Vanover played only the first four minutes of the second half, though. He added another couple of rebounds to finish with nine and did finally make a three-pointer, but those were his only three points in 20 minutes of action.

The rest of the game, Musselman wanted to get a look at other players, such as 6-foot-10 freshman Jaylin Williams.

“I wish I would have played Connor more because he was deserving of it, with how he played, but I did want some of the younger guys to get some experience,” Musselman said. “Tonight when I go home, one of the things I’m going to feel for is he deserved to play more than 20 minutes regardless of the score. Because he was phenomenal.”

Despite shooting the ball better than they did to end the first half, the Razorbacks had a hard time adding to their lead over the Jaguars after halftime.

Arkansas pushed the lead to 30 midway through the second half, but Southern used another 6-0 spurt to keep the score respectable. A dunk by DJ Johnson capped that run and actually led to Musselman calling a rare timeout.

The second-year coach didn’t like what he was seeing on the floor, so he felt like his team needed a “teaching timeout.”

“Defensively, we didn’t front the post like I wanted to,” Musselman said. “I didn’t think we had the ball pressure that we wanted to. I thought we were just kind of coming down offensively and not running all of our sets.

“We didn’t have floor spacing. We had called a couple plays and a different call was made on the floor than what the coaching staff had called with our play card.”

It wasn’t until the final four minutes of the game that Arkansas got its lead over 30 for good, with the aforementioned personal 10-0 run by Davis leading the charge.

Defensively, the Razorbacks limited Southern to just 44 points on 28.6 percent shooting, which was well below their season average of 77 points on 41.2 percent shooting.

Fifth-year senior Ahsante Shivers came into the game as the Jaguars’ leading scorer at 16.5 points per game, but missed all nine of his shots and was held scoreless Wednesday.

“We really pride ourselves on trying to take away the opposing team’s star player,” Musselman said. “The heart of their team is Shivers. … He goes 0 for 9 from the field, 0 for 5 from three, does not score and that was the focal point of our scouting report and we felt like if we took him out of the game it would be hard for Southern to score.”

Southern was also just 1 of 13 from beyond the arc. It was a stellar performance in an area that Musselman has stressed early on.

A year after leading the country in three-point defense, the Razorbacks were barely in the top 100 in that category entering the night, allowing opponents to shoot 29.3 percent on three-pointers.

“I just thought we had high hands before they caught the ball, which is one of the things in our shell defense we always talk about,” Musselman said. “I thought we crowded a little bit more. … We took away air space right on the catch.”

On the other end of the floor, Davis led six players who were in double figures. In addition to him and Moody, Tate and Notae had 12 points apiece and Smith and Sills had 11 points apiece.

The balanced scoring was also a product of the Razorbacks using their entire bench and not allowing any one player to get more than 26 minutes.

For a stretch of about two and a half minutes late in the second half, all four freshmen - Davis, Moody, Williams and KK Robinson - were on the floor at the same time, as Musselman continued getting a look at various combinations.

Junior Ethan Henderson also got about five minutes and pulled down a couple of rebounds. It was the perfect game to give coaches more film to evaluate all 11 healthy scholarship players.

“I think the big thing is our young players, in a game like this, they got an opportunity to go out there and continue to gain a little bit of experience,” Musselman said. “We know when the SEC comes, every minute on the floor, there’s so many close games, so we need to find out who our rotation is and in a game like this, we got to play a lot of people.”

Arkansas will now get a couple of days to prepare for Saturday’s matchup with UCA. It will be the Razorbacks’ first regular-season game against an in-state opponent in 70 years.

Tip off is scheduled for 7 p.m. CT and the game will be streamed online on SEC Network-Plus.