After securing an early 11-5 lead in the first half, it felt like the Arkansas Razorbacks (9-5, 0-1 SEC) were carrying the right mindset to pull off an upset against the No. 25 Auburn Tigers (12-2, 1-0 SEC) on Saturday afternoon at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.
That feeling wore off quickly, though, as sloppy play fueled by careless basketball handed the Razorbacks a 37-30 halftime deficit.
"We’re pretty disappointed in 1-14 tonight," head coach Eric Musselman said after the game. "We had a great crowd. Understanding how hard the SEC is, understanding the competitive nature, understanding the size, understanding the physicality, understanding the will to win.
"I thought we played good in the first half. Not good, but we played decent enough to give ourselves a chance. We did not play the end of the first half very well at all."
In need of a victory to help its post season metrics, Arkansas had to make some serious adjustments to spark a comeback in the second half. Instead, the Hogs continued to make low-effort plays that included multiple airballs and blow-by buckets for Auburn.
"We’ve struggled on pick-and-rolls," Musselman said. "Your shot selection has a lot to do with your transition defense. So, I mean… When you lose by 30, we could go all the way around the room and each of you could pick a different area and you would all be right. We stunk in all areas.
"We’ve got to get a lot better. We’ve got to be a lot more competitive. So, with that, I will say you guys all saw how poorly we played and there’s a million things we could discuss, but we stunk in all those areas."
The most glaring stat was the Hogs' inability to prevent paint buckets. Auburn scored 28 in the first half thanks to multiple fastbreak opportunities and poor one-on-one defense. The Tigers finished the game with 48 paint points compared to just 18 for the Hogs.
"Paint points come in two ways," Musselman said. "They come off dribble-drives, and they come off post-ups. They hurt us in both. I'll go all the way back to year one here. That group understood that we had to guard the three, and we go to LSU and lose 28-1 on the glass or whatever, and we still give ourselves a chance to win because they understood.
"This group does not understand what identity on either side of the ball. We have to just try to figure it out and keep talking about it. Whether it gets solved or not, I don't know."
Just a week after a scoring a season-high 106 points in a win over UNC Wilmington, the Hogs dropped a season-low 51 points in 40 minutes against the Tigers. The performance put on display for a striped-out Bud Walton Arena didn't match the standard set by previous Musselman teams.
"I thought the second half is not anything that resembles anything we have done the last four years," Musselman said. "This team has not resembled what we’ve built the last four years from a competitive standpoint, from a defensive standpoint, from a loose-ball getting standpoint.
"Just a competitive fiber. It wasn’t there for 40 minutes."
Up next, Arkansas will travel to Athens on Wednesday to battle the Georgia Bulldogs (11-3, 1-0 SEC). The game is set to tip off at 8:00 p.m. CT and will broadcast on ESPNU.
