FAYETTEVILLE — Eric Musselman isn’t shy about his disdain for calling timeouts, but he did use one late Tuesday night.
After his team gave up back-to-back 3-pointers that cut its lead - which was once 18 - down to nine, the third-year coach called the rare timeout and Arkansas responded with 10 straight points to pull away for an 86-66 win over Charlotte.
He doesn’t like doing it, but Musselman needed the stoppage to regroup the team and switch up the strategy - which meant playing a two-minute stretch of “stall ball” to get the game back under control.
The Razorbacks waited until there was just 12 seconds left on the shot clock to run their offensive sets for three straight possessions and it worked to perfection, as they coupled it with stops on the other end.
“We came out right around the 5:30 mark and we milked the clock from about 5:30 to 3:30, got that thing back up where I thought we were in safe zone,” Musselman said. “Then I let them play a little bit and didn’t milk the clock.”
That stretch put the finishing touches on a 20-point victory in which Arkansas led by double digits for all but about two minutes in the second half.
It preserved the Razorbacks’ perfect record and improved them to 9-0 for the second straight season.
Here are a few other key takeaways from the win…
Dominating the Boards
A quick glance at the box score reveals Arkansas dominated the glass Tuesday night, out-rebounding Charlotte 41-21. It is just the fourth time over the past six seasons that the Razorbacks have been plus-20 in boards, with the other three coming in non-conference play last year.
Included in the Razorbacks’ total were 15 offensive rebounds, as they grabbed nearly half of their own misses. That led to an 18-6 edge in second-chance points.
That wide of a margin was not by accident. In fact, Musselman said it was part of the game plan. They knew Charlotte didn’t attack the offensive glass very well, so they tried to exploit that.
“We told our guys, ‘Hey, when a shot goes up, go chase it. Go try to get it,’” Musselman said. “Fifteen offensive rebounds is good number, because our shooting percentage was pretty good. So we got a good portion of our misses back. Then I thought we did a good job converting those misses as well.”
It was evident from the start that the 49ers had no answer on the boards. At one point in the first half, Arkansas actually had triple the number of rebounds as Charlotte, 15-5. At halftime, the Razorbacks had as many offensive rebounds (11) as the 49ers had defensive rebounds (11).
