You can't say Eric Musselman isn't a true competitor. The second-year head coach's roster is as banged up as could be but he'd still rather be playing Texas A&M today than indulge in a week-long hiatus.

"We're healthy in the pandemic sense, so when you are you want to play. We did everything from our end to play a game today," Musselman noted Saturday morning before practice. "Frustrated by that. No one knows what’s going to happen next week or the week after that or whatever. So even having some injuries, I still wanted to do everything possible to play a game today, and so did our players."

Musselman let his frustration out on the call with the media, wondering why the SEC decided to push back the start of this season back at all considering athletes in other sports were already playing. Having the season cut down to 27 games has the head hog savoring every opportunity they get to step on the floor.

With talks about how to run the SEC tournament and NCAA tournaments effectively, Musselman is advocating hard for playing it all.

"I wish we had 30 games instead of 27 by the NCAA," Musselman said. "I wish we would have started on time and not pushed it back. I don’t know what pushing it back did. I have no idea. Football was playing. Why was it pushed back? I mean, I have no idea. Other sports are playing and all of a sudden we decide we’re going to push it back two weeks? For what? I think we owe it to the student-athletes to have as much normalcy as we can, to play as many games as we can."

The Razorbacks will travel to play the 5-11 Kentucky Wildcats on Tuesday and as of now, they're still dealing with various injuries that would have them short-handed.

"If we had to play today, and we start practice in 28 minutes - based on yesterday if we had to play today, I would assume Desi would not play, I would assume Jaylin Williams probably wouldn’t play and if he did it would be for five to 10 minutes like it was last game. But his mobility would be hampered. I would think that Justin would play. And then Moses seemed to be moving better yesterday than prior, so I would think he would be fine."

Sills, averaging 25 min and 10.6 ppg, injured his left shoulder against Mississippi State last Tuesday. Musselman said he's only heard it called a "stinger," but the junior has struggled lifting his arm up to shoot ever since.

Williams has a bone bruise but was able to contribute nine minutes against the Bulldogs. Moses Moody and Justin Smith are both getting their ankles back to full strength.

Though Kentucky still has to face Tennessee Saturday and is coming off two more games versus ranked opponents, Musselman is more concerned about his team's ability to deliver after the long break (and the injuries) than he is about Kentucky's status after a tough stretch of scheduling.

"We're not able to scrimmage with all the bang-ups and injuries we have, so I can't go simulate a game today with our players because we just don't have enough able bodies," Musselman said. "Guys that are sitting out when we do our drills and our Kentucky specialty stations, yeah, I'm concerned that they're not getting live action against that stuff, maybe more so than Kentucky's difficult stretch from a schedule standpoint. We're not accustomed to having this much time between games."

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