8/25/2016 football Edit

Thursday Razorback Basketball Notebook - LIVE UPDATES

Trey Biddy • HawgBeat

Publisher

Entering his 15th season covering the Razorbacks with HawgSports.com after starting in 2003, Trey can also be heard daily at 5:05 pm on DriveTime Sports on KABZ 103.7 The Buzz and affiliate stations.

-Arkansas coach Mike Anderson said the Spain trip gave him a chance to assess the potential of the basketball team, and he said it is going to be a very athletic team with more depth than they had last year. Now they have to develop the team in to a unit.

-For the players, he said it was an experience they'll remember the rest of their lives.

-They'll start individual practices next week, and then a month out from when they start team practices, they'll start their conditioning program.

-Anderson said freshman C.J. Jones has a lot of potential, but there is plenty he has to learn - like defense. He said from what he saw, they're going to be a really good defensive team. He also said on offense they're going to be fine and deep, it's just a matter of fine tuning.

-Anderson said the opening loss in Spain was because they were out-hustled, and that seemed to be the sentiment from the players, as well. There was some underlying talk of jet lag and 'the terrain,' they played on in that game. The next game they got delayed with traffic and had to push the game back to 7:30 p.m. They had to play pretty much after getting off the bus, and Anderson said they responded better and learned from that first game. He said they put themselves in a tough position to start in the first game as he platooned players into the game (which he didn't do in the second game), but they still had a chance to win with 30 seconds left.

-Anderson attributed recent recruiting success in the Class of 2017 and 2018 to hard work.

-Anderson said the strength of this team will be bigger depth, and they have bigger guards than they've had in the past

"Really, we've got to get better at defense," Anderson said. "We've got some guys now that can play on the ball defense, but help side defense will take some work for a lot of guys here."

-Anderson said "We have no starters right now."

-He also said his players have been living in the gym since they got back and they're always in coaches' offices asking what they need to do to get better.

-Anderson said Anton Beard has grown up a lot since last year, and part of that was forced by Anderson bringing in some big-time JUCO guards. Beard had a GPA of over 3.0 for the summer. Anderson said he looks like the guy who played his freshman year but a year older.

"He didn't look his best last year," Anderson said. "I thought he played well, took command of the team. He was one of the top assist guys, his turnovers were low, especially the way they were calling it."

-Anderson said one game they warmed up and asked what ball they were going to play with before warmups, and they took their ball and said they'll be playing with that one. Then right before tip, they pulled out a European-style ball and said they were playing with that one instead. Anderson let them know that wasn't 'cool,' and the coach after the game said 'that wasn't a trick.'

-Anderson said they will have the practice schedule ironed out this week. They get 42 days to hold 30 days of practice. The Little Rock game will be Sam Houston State and tickets will go on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m.

"We already started early. I don't want to burn them out," Anderson said of when they will start practice.