Musselman: 'We're offensively challenged'
After his team fell to 1-3 in SEC play with an 84-69 loss to No. 4 Alabama on Wednesday, Arkansas head coach Eric Musselman had plenty to say about the state of the Razorbacks.
The Hogs are averaging just under 65 points per game in conference play, which would rank 325th in the nation if that was their average for the season. Without star players Nick Smith Jr. and Trevon Brazile, Arkansas has had issues finding consistent scoring from anyone.
"As a coach, the first thing you want to know is your team playing hard," Musselman said. "I do think this team is playing hard but we’re offensively challenged. That’s a fact. That’s not an opinion.
"There would be a lot of other teams offensively challenged too if two players you built your roster around aren’t here. But nobody cares and there’s other injuries throughout athletics in all different sports in the professional ranks and the college ranks. Right now we’re still trying to figure out who we are."
Entering SEC play, the Razorbacks ranked 32nd nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency on KenPom. They now rank 57th after four conference games, and their effective offensive field goal percentage also dropped 77 spots to No. 134.
The three losses — Alabama, Auburn and LSU — are all in the bottom five of single game offensive efficiency marks this season.
According to EvanMiya analytics, four of Arkansas' five best five-man lineups this season included either Smith or Brazile.
"I mean, just the scoring and the shooting numbers, we’re missing … and I want to be perfectly clear: there is no excuse," Musselman said. "Like, again, I’ve been around the game way too long and injuries are a part of the game. But we’re missing two guys that we had projected to play right around 60 minutes for us. We’ve got to keep searching and trying to figure it out."
Arkansas' 3-point percentage of 28.4% ranks dead last in the SEC and 345th in the country. According to KenPom, just 18.1% of the Razorbacks' total points have come on 3-pointers, which ranks 362nd out of 363 teams.
That proved to be a big difference in Wednesday's loss to Alabama when the Crimson Tide rattled off three straight with just under five minutes to play to turn a 2-point game into an 11-point game. Alabama was 7 of 10 from deep in the second half alone, while the Hogs shot 2 of 10 from behind the arc in the entire game.
Add on the fact that Arkansas is 34 of 55 (61.8%) from the free throw line over the past two games, and the Hogs are really struggling to find any consistency on offense.
"I mean we take 10 three balls attempted to their 20, so they took twice as many threes as us and we only got to the line 23 times," Musselman said. "So I don’t know how that … I don’t understand that. If we were taking a lot of three-point shots I would understand it. But we’ve got to take better care of the ball too. I mean we didn’t shoot the ball well and we had 15 turnovers and gave up 9 threes."
Not only were the shots not falling at a high enough rate, but the team had two extremely costly turnovers during Alabama's 3-point barrage out of a timeout at the 4:54 mark in the second half. To make matters worse, the Hogs have been slacking on creating steals after they ranked 9th in the nation in steals per game (10.7) entering conference play.
Just six steals against the No. 4 team in the nation won't cut it, and an average of 6.3 steals per game in SEC play so far is a concern for Musselman.
"To be honest with you, I’m extremely disappointed in our lack of steals," Musselman said. "But I haven’t changed the game plan or the scheme. You get into conference play and I do think people take better care of the basketball.
"Like I said, we can talk about the last two years (but) we are in a completely and utterly different state and in a way more uphill battle than we’ve been since I’ve been here, to be quite honest."
The conference slate will carry on with a matchup in Nashville against the Vanderbilt Commodores at 1 p.m. CT Saturday inside Memorial Gymnasium. The game will be broadcast on ESPNU.