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FAYETTEVILLE — As it has several times this season, Arkansas took Kentucky’s best punch before gathering itself and pulling out another close victory Saturday afternoon.
Jaylin Williams knocked down a go-ahead jumper with 1:22 remaining and the Razorbacks made a couple of key defensive stops to beat the No. 6 Wildcats 75-73 inside a raucous Bud Walton Arena.
The bucket by Williams came about a minute after Kellan Grady put Kentucky up by one with his lone 3-pointer of the game, providing the 16th — and final — lead change of the second half.
“In the huddles, we just try to do our best to stay composed when the game gets close like that,” Stanley Umude said. “I think we just try and find a way to win. That’s the biggest thing for us.”
For much of the first half, though, it seemed like it wasn’t going to be close down the stretch.
After the Wildcats scored the first basket of the game, Arkansas answered with the next 15 points and held a double-digit lead for nearly half of the first half.
The Razorbacks actually led by as many as 13 points on three different occasions, including with about four minutes left. However, Kentucky answered by ending the half on a 9-2 run during which Arkansas went 1 of 4 from the floor with five turnovers after committing just one in the first 16 minutes.
That poor stretch bled over to the start of the second half, too. Trey Wade let a pass go through his hands near half court and Keion Brooks Jr. came up with it for an easy fast break layup that put Kentucky up 41-40.
It was the Wildcats’ first lead since it was 2-0 and prompted a rare timeout by head coach Eric Musselman.
“If you look at Kentucky’s games, the last several games, they’ve come out and had great runs to come out and start second halves,” Musselman said. “So that was in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to tell the team at halftime, that they’re really good coming out, but I did tell it to them once that run was kind of semi-controlled by us.”
Neither team could really pull away from that point forward. In fact, at one point, there was a five-minute stretch in which there were nine lead changes and neither team led by more than one.
Kentucky managed to go up by four midway through the half and Arkansas also had a few four-point leads, but it was a layup by Oscar Tshiebwe followed by Grady’s aforementioned 3 that gave the Wildcats a one-point lead and set up Williams’ go-ahead bucket.
The Wildcats still had a couple of chances to retake the lead or tie it up, but Brooks was whistled for an offensive foul when he pushed off before an in bounds pass just over a minute left.
After a pair of free throws by Williams, giving him 10 straight points for Arkansas, Brooks missed a potential game-tying 3 with about 23 seconds left and Au’Diese Toney tracked down the rebound to essentially seal the Razorbacks’ 13th victory in 14 games.
That stretch has included four wins over AP top-25 teams, including current top-20 teams Auburn, Tennessee and Kentucky in their last three games played in Fayetteville.
“What the group has done is they’ve weathered a really, really tough schedule,” Musselman said. “And not only did they weather (it), but they dominated it by winning basketball games, quite frankly, against some incredible teams.”
Here are several other key takeaways from Arkansas’ win Saturday afternoon…
Notae Goes Wild
It didn’t take long to realize JD Notae was feeling it against Kentucky. The SEC’s second-leading scorer made seven of his first nine shots on his way to a 30-point effort. Although he turned it over five times, Notae also had eight assists.
“I think he’s one of the best players in the country,” Musselman said. “He’s growing, too. He’s been a scorer his whole life. He’s a natural 2-guard that needs to continue to convert to play that 1 spot, and he continues to get better.”
Notae scored 18 points in the first half and added another 12 in the second half, shooting 13 of 26 from the floor and 2 of 8 from beyond the arc. He did that despite Kentucky being physical with him all day and getting to the charity stripe for just two free throw attempts — which he made.
It was the third 30-point performance of the season, as he also dropped 30 in the season opener against Mercer and 31 in a road loss at Texas A&M.
“It’s comforting knowing you are going into a game with a guy like that, playing in a big game,” Umude said. “He takes pressure off all of us just knowing what he can do out there and it shows what type of players he is showing up in these big games like this — 50 percent and 30 points against one of the best teams in the nation at home.”
Although he started off hot shooting the ball, it was an ill-advised step-back 3 that Notae missed that led to Musselman encouraging him to make smarter decisions. He responded with back-to-back perfect passes to Wade for dunks, one of which was a 3-point play.
Notae’s final assist of the game was actually on Williams’ go-ahead jumper. The eight dimes were tied for the third most of his career, trailing only a 10-assist effort against Kennesaw State in 2019 when he was at Jacksonville and a 9-assist performance against Northern Iowa earlier this year. The most he had in an SEC game previously was six at Georgia.
