Key takeaways, box score from Arkansas' win over Gonzaga in the Sweet 16

Perhaps it was his dad’s lucky buckeye his mom gave him before the game or maybe his team’s stellar defense had more to do with it, but Eric Musselman and Arkansas are still alive after knocking off yet another No. 1 team Thursday night.

After beating Auburn earlier in the year, the latest upset came on the sport’s biggest stage, as the Razorbacks led for all but 40 seconds in the second half and beat Gonzaga 74-68 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

The win punched Arkansas’ ticket to a second straight Elite Eight, marking the fourth time in UA history it has reached back-to-back regional finals. It is also the first time in 11 tries that the Razorbacks — who were 9.5-point underdogs — have beaten a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament since the current seeding format started in 1979.

“I think we're being disrespected the whole year, so it's just another thing for us,” Jaylin Williams said. “We saw that and everything they were saying. We felt like they were dancing before the game.

“That was disrespect to us. We came into the game playing hard and had a chip on our shoulder. Every game we do, and we played hard for 40 minutes, so that's just what we do now.”

Trey Wade made a 3-pointer with about two minutes remaining to put the Razorbacks up by eight, but it seemed like Gonzaga might be able to rally and at least force overtime.

In fact, after cutting their deficit to four and five points on separate occasions in the final 30 seconds, the Bulldogs had two chance to make it a one-possession game, but Au’Diese Toney blocked both of their attempts.

Those proved to be huge plays, as they were sandwiched around a miraculous 3-pointer by Andrew Nembhard that pulled Gonzaga within 68-65 with 16 seconds left.

The Bulldogs couldn’t get over the hump, though, because Arkansas — as it has done so many times this season — hung on down the stretch by finally knocking down its free throws. After starting the game 3 of 8 from the line, the Razorbacks made their final six in the closing seconds to keep the game out of reach.

Toney put the exclamation point on the win by streaking wide open for a dunk just before the buzzer after a long in bounds pass from Williams.

“I saw him the whole time,” Williams said. “I don't think I looked at anybody else. He was wide open. I just waited for a guy to clear, and I threw it to him, and he did his thing.”

Here are several more key takeaways from Arkansas’ upset win over Gonzaga…

Slowing Down Gonzaga

The story of the night was how well the Razorbacks slowed down the Bulldogs’ vaunted offense, which ranked No. 1 in adjusted offensive efficiency on KenPom and near the top of several key statistics.

Gonzaga scored just 68 points on 37.5 percent shooting from the floor and 23.8 percent shooting from beyond the arc. Those were well below its season averages of 87.8 points, 52.6% and 37.4%, respectively.

That was so important that praise for his team’s defense was the first thing out Musselman’s mouth in the postgame press conference.

“I just thought defensively we played so good,” Musselman said. “I thought we did a great job of forcing turnovers — 15 turnovers. Gonzaga is a great passing team. They're extremely unselfish. We held them to nine assists, so that differential of assist to turnovers, we felt like (were) things we wanted to do defensively.”