The Arkansas Razorbacks (10-9, 1-5 SEC) are just one game above .500 after playing 19 games this season, and Wednesday's 26-point loss to Ole Miss was just the latest version of the Hoop Hogs being out-played by their opponent.
Led by first-year head coach Chris Beard, the Rebels took it to an Arkansas team that was without star guard Tramon Mark (migraines) to begin with and then it saw forward Trevon Brazile not play in the second half with a knee soreness.
Having your top two players out isn't going to help anything, but the Razorbacks likely weren't winning on Wednesday either way. Head coach Eric Musselman said after the loss that his players aren't seizing opportunities the way they should.
"Every team goes through injuries, every team goes through players in and out of the lineup," Musselman said. "It allowed other people an opportunity to play. And then you go back and watch the film and try to dissect the players the extra minutes.
"But we’re not shooting the ball, we’re not defending well. We turned the ball over to start the game way too much. Got the turnovers a little bit under control. I thought we moved the ball better tonight than we had with 13 assists on 17 made field goals. But just go up and down [boxscore) and 2 for 9, 3 for 10, 1 for 5, 0 for 5. You’ve got to make shots, and certainly defending becomes a problem."
With no Mark for the whole game and no Brazile for one half, Khalif Battle led the Hogs in scoring with 11 points on 2 for 9 shooting. At one point in the game, Battle had to be helped off with an apparent injury to his right leg, but he was able to return later.
Arkansas shot just 33.3% from the field, 22.7% from three and 66.7% from the free throw line Wednesday. The Razorbacks didn't have a single player make more than three made field goals, and Joseph Pinion's 10 points marked the only other double-digit showing outside of Battle.
"I mean everybody’s getting an opportunity," Musselman said. "Like I said, point guard play, turnovers, shooters… Shooters are struggling shooting the ball. At the center spot, we had zero defensive rebounds. There’s a lot of areas. It’s not one particular player. It’s not one particular position. It’s across the board. We’re getting out-played at every position right now."
Yes, you read that right — Arkansas had zero defensive rebounds from the center position. That means that between Chandler Lawson, Jalen Graham, Makhi Mitchell and Baye Fall, not a single one of those four were able to grab a defensive rebound.
"We were up on the glass at one point rebounding the ball, and then the second half the rebounding was heavily tilted towards Ole Miss," Musselman said.
In fact, Arkansas and Ole Miss had 14 rebounds each with 1:09 to go in the first half. The Rebels then out-rebounded the Hogs 29-14 from that point on.
"Right now, teams are just outplaying us," Musselman said. "You can have great practices, but teams have size on us at certain positions. I’ll say it once and I’ll say it 100 times, I’d rather have a team play well in games and not practice well. We’ve had some guys not practice well over the last three years, but certainly produced in the game."
Musselman could be referring to any of the four players on last year's roster who have played in an NBA game this year — Anthony Black, Nick Smith Jr., Jordan Walsh or Ricky Council IV.
"Right now, that’s a lot to replace as we’re starting to see this thing unfold before us," Musselman said. "There’s not a lot of teams in college basketball that had four players from one team go on to play in the NBA. And then you try to figure out what you can do and right now obviously we’re struggling on both sides of the ball."
Up next, Arkansas will host a top-10 Kentucky team on Saturday at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville with ESPN's College GameDay in town. The game is set for a 5 p.m. CT tipoff on ESPN.
