In Muss' Words: What's wrong with Arkansas basketball?
Since starting the season 9-0 and rising to No. 10 in the rankings, Arkansas has lost four of its last five games. Not only have the Razorbacks dropped out of the AP Poll, but they're currently not even on the bubble.
The rough patch includes losses to Hofstra in North Little Rock and Vanderbilt at Bud Walton Arena. The past five games have featured different rotations, inconsistencies and some specific areas of struggle.
What does head coach Eric Musselman see as the major issues during that time?
Let's go back over some postgame press conferences from the past five games and look for specific areas Musselman himself focused on. We've also provided some deeper context to each of those issues.
Despite it being a major problem, team shooting is not on this list after some improvements and because the other issues in this piece are much more relevant to the team’s problems at this moment.
Rebounding
What was viewed as a strength through the first nine games of the season has become a major weakness for the Razorbacks that Coach Musselman has addressed on multiple occasions.
Heading into the Oklahoma game, Arkansas had been out-rebounded just once - in a win over Little Rock in which the Trojans had a plus-1 advantage on the glass. Arkansas was plus-9.5 on the glass through nine games, but has since lost the rebounding battle in four of the last five games.
Against Oklahoma, Musselman was frustrated with the team’s performance as a whole, and rightfully so. In his postgame presser he mentioned numerous aspects of the game specifically in a string of critiques that began with rebounding.
“We got out-toughed today to be quite honest," Musselman said. "We didn’t rebound like we’re capable of, we turned the ball over too much.” He mentioned rebounding in passing towards the end of the presser, as well, simply saying, “We didn’t rebound the ball.”
Oklahoma came in with a game plan designed to limit Arkansas’ success on the glass and it worked, as they won the rebounding battle 36-29. The Razorbacks had only one offensive rebounds while the Sooners managed five.
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