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FAYETTEVILLE — Eric Musselman told us it was coming, but it’s still a bit jarring to see how many minutes Arkansas’ starters have played through 10 games.
Four players are averaging at least 31 minutes per game so far this season. During former head coach Mike Anderson’s eight-year tenure, only one player - Jaylen Barford in 2017-18 - exceeded that.
Part of that has to do with the current makeup of the team, which includes one open scholarship and three players sitting out because of the NCAA transfer rule, but it also shows the stylistic differences between the two coaches.
While Anderson constantly rotated players to keep them fresh for his “Fastest 40” style, Musselman subs much less frequently, keeping his best players on the floor for the majority of the game.
“If you look at the minutes of the guys at Nevada over the last four years, we’ve tended to play guys a lot of minutes,” Musselman said. “Some of my good friends, like Tom Thibodeau, rolled with guys that they thought were really hot or really important players and we tended to do that, as well.”
In each of his final two seasons with the Wolfpack, Musselman played Jordan Caroline, Cody Martin and Caleb Martin more than 33 minutes per game. The year before that, four of his starters averaged more than 31 minutes.
According to Musselman, players eventually get used to those extended minutes from a conditioning standpoint. He’s not sure if the Razorbacks are quite there yet, but they’re close, which is important with SEC play right around the corner.
“I don’t know if through 10 games is enough,” Musselman said. “I certainly think you start getting to 13, 14, 15 games, I think we noticed with the Martin twins, that once they got about halfway through that season, I thought that they really understood that was going to be their workload.”
No player has been on the court as much as Isaiah Joe, who leads the team and ranks 18th nationally at 37 minutes per game.
If he maintains that throughout the rest of the season, it would be the highest average for the Razorbacks in nearly four decades, according to HogStats.com. Only U.S. Reed (37.9 in 1979-80) and Sidney Moncrief (38.6 in 1978-79) have averaged more in the past 43 seasons.
