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FAYETTEVILLE — It isn’t unusual for Eric Musselman to have posters with scouting reports on the walls of Arkansas’ practice gym, but he took it up a notch in the days leading up to Tuesday’s game.

With only two days to prepare for what proved to be a 61-45 win over Mississippi State, the Razorbacks’ sometimes eccentric second-year coach plastered signs everywhere in sight, all conveying one message: rebound.

“We put over 100 rebounding signs all over our locker room, on the players’ cars,” Musselman said. “We planted them all over everywhere, because we felt like that was something we had to do to give ourselves a chance to win.”

He wasn’t exaggerating, as the players confirmed the validity of Musselman’s strategy following the win. Connor Vanover, Arkansas’ 7-foot-3 big man, said he say at least “50 or more” of the rebounding posters.

“They were everywhere - signs all over the locker room, outside,” Vanover said. “He definitely put them on our cars and I thought that was the crazy part. We had little individual ones, as well. I had a sheet that said 'Toughness. No duck-ins. Defensive Rebounding.’”

It was quite the sight walking into the locker room and seeing them all over the walls, freshman Davonte Davis said, but the message was well received and executed.

Despite the Bulldogs coming into the game ranked first in the SEC and 15th nationally with a plus-8.7 rebounding margin, Arkansas out-rebounded them 45-34.

“I've never seen (anything like it) before,” Davis said. “It's something we all knew we had to do, and it was something that we looked forward to doing during this game.”

Perhaps most importantly, the Razorbacks limited Mississippi State to only eight second-chance points on eight offensive rebounds.

Musselman said the goal was to allow nine or fewer offensive boards, so it was mission accomplished even though the Bulldogs missed a ton of shots - shooting just 30.6 percent - and had plenty of opportunities.

The usual suspects led the way, with Justin Smith grabbing a team-high 10 rebounds and Vanover notching eight, but the Razorbacks also got eight rebounds from Davis - a 6-foot-3 guard.

“He’s just sneaky,” Vanover said about Davis. “He knows how to get in there, wiggle around other people and just snatch rebounds and get loose balls. He’s just really good at that and it was really big for us because he was able to do that a lot of different times.”

Fellow guard Moses Moody added seven rebounds, while Jalen Tate and JD Notae each had three and Desi Sills snagged one. That means nearly half of Arkansas’ 45 rebounds - 22 to be exact - were accounted for by guards.

That was by design, as Musselman explained in the postgame. He’s always emphasized guards doing their part on the boards - something he picked up from former NBA coach Hubie Brown - and it was even more important against Mississippi State’s size.

The rebounds by Arkansas’ guards likely would have otherwise been grabbed by 6-foot-10 Tolu Smith and 6-foot-11 Abdul Ado. Instead, the pair finished with five and one rebounds, respectively - well short of the combined 15.3 they averaged coming into the game.

“We don’t want our guys to leak out,” Musselman said. “Our guards did a good job of folding down, double-blocking out. One of the drill segments we had in practice the last two days was for our guards to go down there and double-block out on Smith and Ado.”

Holding Adu to just one rebound - and none on the offensive glass - was particularly gratifying for the Razorbacks because it was his offensive rebound and tip in that beat them at the buzzer last season.

It proved that Musselman’s crazy idea of putting posters everywhere within sight was quite effective.

“Making their main rebounder only have one rebound and holding all their others to less than they would I think was really good,” Vanover said. “We had really good buy in from everybody - me and all of the guards - making sure we defensive rebounded.”