Is this finally the year Arkansas can't get back on track?

For the third straight season, Arkansas lost its SEC opener, bringing head coach Eric Musselman's record in conference openers to 2-3 during his time in Fayetteville as the Razorbacks fell to 9-5 (0-1 SEC) on the year in a 32-point embarrassment against Auburn on Saturday.

It was the first home conference opener Musselman has lost at the helm in Fayetteville, but the 83-51 loss also served as the worst defeat in Bud Walton Arena history thirty years after the Razorbacks won a national championship in the arena's inaugural season.

Adversity is not new to Musselman or the Razorback program. The 2020-21 team started 2-4 in conference play, the 2021-22 season saw Arkansas start 0-3 in SEC play, and the 2022-23 season never took hold in conference play as they finished below .500 at 8-10.

Each of those teams either managed a late run — or in the case of last year's team, played well enough in losses and won enough big games — to make the NCAA Tournament and make a second weekend appearance.

Surely that could happen again this year — the Razorbacks have a quality win over Duke at home and defeated Purdue in an exhibition matchup — but each passing week this season it has seemed less and less likely. The team that narrowly defeated Lipscomb, trailed at halftime to Abilene Christian, and was outclassed by North Carolina, Memphis, and Oklahoma is a far cry from the Duke and Purdue matchups.

Yes, obviously the game against the Boilermakers did not count in the official record books, but the point of the observation is that the performance was much better than any Arkansas has had since. What happened to that team? The rotations are completely different, the edge isn't the same, and to be frank, the care is completely absent right now.

None of these observations are lost on Musselman, though, as the head coach was blunt as blunt could be in the postgame presser.

"We could go all the way around the room and each of you (media members) could pick a different area and you would all be right," Musselman said. "We stunk in all areas. I mean, transition defense, what about Johni Broome in the second half — I could go on and on.

"Yeah, we stunk. We gotta get a lot better to even survive in this league. We’ve got to get a lot better. We’ve got to be a lot more competitive. So, with that, I will say you guys all saw how poorly we played and there’s a million things we could discuss, but we stunk in all those areas."

Not to harp on Saturday's performance, but Arkansas was dominated in nearly every single statistical category. Auburn outscored the Razorbacks in the paint 48-18, out-rebounded them 46-32, had 46 bench points to Arkansas's nine, shot a better percentage at all three levels, and so on. Embarrassing is too nice of a descriptor for the performance, but that game, and its historical final deficit, are in the past now. Arkansas has to move forward.

In Musselman's second season at Arkansas, his team lost on the road to Alabama, 90-59. That loss was every bit as pathetic and embarrassing, but the team rallied to win 11 of its final 12 conference games that year. What's stopping Arkansas from that sort of turnaround?