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Hogs knock off No. 10 Mizzou in OT

Arkansas knocked off No. 10 Missouri in overtime Saturday afternoon.
Arkansas knocked off No. 10 Missouri in overtime Saturday afternoon. (Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports)

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After blowing a late lead in regulation, Arkansas had to overcome a bad call in the final minute of overtime to secure its sixth straight SEC win Saturday afternoon.

Even though replay overturned Jalen Tate’s clean block that was originally ruled a go-ahead goaltending violation, No. 10 Missouri retained possession and got another chance. The Razorbacks stopped the Tigers again, though, and iced the 86-81 upset at the free throw line.

It was Arkansas’ first road win over an AP top-10 team since beating No. 10 Tennessee in 2006 and the victory kept it in a tie for second place in the SEC standings at 16-5 overall and 8-4 in conference play.

“This is a really fun group to coach,” head coach Eric Musselman said. “It’s a group that continues to form chemistry. I know that sounds kind of weird, but with COVID, when we go on the road, we’re doing exercises with each other to get to know each other that normally happen in September.”

In an ending that felt eerily similar to their controversial football loss at Auburn, when officials ruled there was no clear an immediate recovery of a fumble, the Razorbacks appeared to be in position to finish off a one-point victory when Tate blocked a layup by Dru Smith with about 18 seconds left and Desi Sills came down with the rebound.

Instead, the officials immediately ruled it was a goaltending violation by Tate and gave Missouri the bucket to go up 83-82. Replay reviews clearly showed the ball was blocked before touching the backboard, though, so the call was overturned.

Even though Sills quickly picked up the loose ball, that didn’t matter because the rule states that play is dead at the point of the incorrect goaltending call and the ball is awarded based on the possession arrow.

“It’s Valentine’s Day coming up, so I’ve got to save every penny I’ve got for a good Valentine’s Day present for Danyelle,” Musselman said when asked about the play afterward. “Quite frankly, I thought we got the rebound and it was going to be ours, but that rule has got to be probably discussed at a later time, because it’s a tough call.”

Given a second opportunity to take the lead, Smith once again drove to the basket and was cut off by Tate. That forced him into a wild pass pass that Moses Moody eventually came up with for a steal.

The freshman calmly knocked down both of his free throws to push Arkansas’ lead to three and, after Xavier Pinson badly missed a potential game-tying three-pointer, Justin Smith grabbed the rebound and put the finishing touches on the victory with two more free throws.

That capped a 20-of-23 (87.0 percent) performance at the charity stripe for the Razorbacks, which Musselman said was the result of a free throw drill they do in every practice.

“It puts us in that situation,” Moody said of the drill. “So when we’re in an end-game situation, like the one that happened today, I feel like I’ve been there before, every day almost.”

It was an exciting game from start to finish, as neither team led by double digits at any point and it was a one-possession game for all but about four minutes from halftime on.

However, the first half was mostly dominated by Missouri.

Moody scored Arkansas’ first seven points, including a couple of quick buckets that resulted in an early 4-2 lead, but he picked up two fouls less than a minute apart. The second of those sent him to the bench at the 14:33 mark.

Without him, the Razorbacks struggled offensively and the Tigers managed to build a nine-point lead with a pair of 8-0 runs despite them being sandwiched around a 5-minute, 43-second scoreless drought and not having star big man Jeremiah Tilmon available because of a death in his family.

“When Moses wasn’t in the game, I didn’t think we had the rhythm offensively,” Musselman said. “I did not want Moses to pick up a third foul in the first half. That was something that was really, really important as a decision that I made.”

In Tilmon’s place, Van Buren native Mitchell Smith made his first start of the season and promptly knocked down two three-pointers in the first of those 8-0 runs. He came into the game just 5 of 27 (18.5 percent) from deep.

That was a theme throughout the game, as Torrence Watson (3 of 13 coming in) went 3 of 5 and Drew Buggs made his first three-pointer after missing his first 10 of the season. Throw in the usual suspects - Pinson and Dru Smith - and Missouri shot 13 of 32 (40.6 percent) from beyond the arc.

At one point, the Tigers were 12 of 25, which was well above their season average of 30.7 percent that ranked 290th nationally.

“We gave up a lot of threes early in the game to players, quite frankly, that we kind of wanted to shoot, guys that maybe were not go-to players for them from three,” Musselman said. “We obviously don’t want Pinson to go 5 of 8 or Dru Smith to go 2 of 4, but we were going to live with Watson and Buggs and Mitchell Smith’s threes.”

While they were lighting it up from three, Arkansas was once again struggling to score against Missouri. Combined with their 13-point loss on Jan. 2, the Razorbacks shot just 28.7 percent through their first three halves against the Tigers.

They got to the free throw line just enough to stay within striking distance, taking a 35-31 deficit into halftime.

The second half was a completely different story for Arkansas, which scored the first six points of the half and took its first lead in more than 20 minutes of game action on a Davonte Davis dish to Connor Vanover for a dunk.

It was the first two of seven quick points for the 7-foot-3 big man, who also made a tough reverse layup and knocked down a three within the first four minutes of the half after not doing much of anything in four first-half minutes.

“We threw it into him and ran a play about four straight times that we have not run one time this year,” Musselman said. “We had to diagram it in a timeout, a five-down play where everybody’s on the weak side and Moses tries to throw an entry pass into CV and he just goes to work.”

Another reason the Razorbacks went from averaging 0.8 to 1.4 points per possession - and shot 59.4 percent from the floor - after halftime was the play of Justin Smith.

The graduate transfer from Indiana missed last month’s matchup because of his ankle injury that required surgery, but he made his presence felt by scoring 17 of his 19 points after halftime. Smith also finished with six rebounds, three assists, two steals and no turnovers.

“I thought he was awesome,” Musselman said. “I thought he ran the floor hard. Obviously defensively, he’s so hard to take off the floor. … That was his best game as a Razorback.”

The Razorbacks led by as many as seven midway through the second half and even had a four-point lead when Missouri called a timeout with 70 seconds left.

Out of the timeout, Mitchell Smith grabbed an offensive rebound and scored his first points since hitting the early threes on a putback. After Davis missed a jumper on the other end, Missouri came down and tied it up on a reverse layup by Parker Braun in the closing seconds.

Braun also blocked Davis’ final attempt at the buzzer to send the game to overtime, tied 73-73.

“Often times you see a team that’s right there on the verge of winning when they’re on the road and the game goes into overtime, you see an emotional letdown,” Musselman said. “You see a team kind of hang their head because it was right there in regulation for us to win.”

Arkansas didn’t let that happen. Smith opened overtime with a layup, and got Mitchell Smith to foul out in the process, and four lead changes ensued during the five-minute extra period.

The last of those lead changes came when Moody hit Davis cutting to the basket for a layup that made it 82-81 with 35 seconds remaining. That set up the wild finish mentioned above, with Moody and Smith eventually sealing the victory with free throws.

“They had a run at the end of regulation, hit two great shots,” Moody said. “They out-hustled us. We could have looked at that and just been like, ‘Ah, man, they’re hype and we’re down,’ but we took that as they punked us, so now we have to retaliate, and that’s what we did in overtime.”

In addition to Smith’s team-high 19 points, the Razorbacks also double-digit contributions from Moody (16), Tate (14) and Vanover (12).

They did it with excellent ball movement, notching 18 assists on their 29 total field goals. Six different players had multiple dimes, with big men Vanover, Smith and Jaylin Williams combining for eight of them.

“We play through those guys a lot,” Musselman said. “We wanted to try to alleviate some pressure by using some back-door cuts even if we didn’t score on the back-door cuts. Connor and Justin and Jaylin, those guys are really, really good passers.”

It’s the first time in six years that Arkansas has won at least six consecutive SEC games, plus the victory moves it past last year’s conference win total with six games left.

After back-to-back road games, the Razorbacks will try to make it seven straight when they welcome Florida to Bud Walton Arena on Tuesday. Tip off is scheduled for 6 p.m. CT and the game will be televised on ESPN2.

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