Win over LSU caps 'Revenge Tour' for Hogs
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FAYETTEVILLE — Give him a second chance to play a team and Eric Musselman will make the most of it.
With a resounding win over LSU on Saturday, Arkansas improved to 8-2 against teams it played earlier in the season, including a 6-1 mark against those that previously beat it, under the second-year head coach.
The Razorbacks are a perfect 4-0 in rematch games so far this season, sweeping the home-and-home with Auburn and avenging double-digit losses to Missouri, Alabama and LSU - all three of which came in a two-week span.
“On our scouting report it said, ‘Revenge tour ends tonight,’ and it did,” senior Justin Smith said after Arkansas beat the Tigers 83-75. “We got our revenge.”
The old adage in sports is that it’s hard to beat a good team twice, but that hasn’t always been the case at Arkansas. In the three seasons before Musselman arrived, the Razorbacks were just 12-11 against teams it played earlier in the season, including a 6-4 mark against those that previously beat them.
Musselman is less than a second away from being 7-0 when getting a second crack at a team he lost to earlier, as Mississippi State’s 6-foot-10 Abdul Ado tipped in a missed shot with 0.6 left to give the Bulldogs a season sweep last year.
The Razorbacks did manage to get payback against LSU, Missouri and Tennessee last season, even experiencing a 38-point swing against the Volunteers.
“It gives your staff an opportunity - and your players - where you can watch film of where your weaknesses are and where the holes are,” Musselman said. “You’ve got to make adjustments. … This league is so well prepared and everybody’s making adjustments.”
That performance against Tennessee - going from a 21-point loss to a 17-point win - set the stage for what Arkansas has done so far this year.
During an ugly 2-4 start to conference play, the Razorbacks lost to Missouri by 13, LSU by 16 and Alabama by 31. Those first two margins weren’t even fully indicative of just how poorly they played, as they made just 3 of 23 layups against Missouri and trailed by as many as 31 at LSU.
“The last two opponents in particular, I think we were embarrassed with our performance and I think we had that extra edge to ourselves, and I think even the Missouri game,” Musselman said. “Those were the three games this year that we were not happy with our performance.”
During their nine-game SEC winning streak, though, they won at Missouri by five in overtime and just finished off back-to-back home wins over Alabama and LSU by 15 and eight points, respectively.
“Those games,” junior JD Notae said, “when we lost to them in the back of our minds we were like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to get both of them back.’”
The difference in statistics between the first and second matchups is jarring. Getting Smith back and healthy certainly helped, but the Razorbacks went from averaging just 67.7 points on 31.4 percent shooting to averaging 83.3 points on 45.5 percent shooting.
Defensively, Arkansas gave up 87.7 points per game on 49.4 percent shooting in its three blowout losses, but limited those three teams to an average of 74 points on 40.3 percent shooting the second time around.
Rebounding was also dramatically better, as the Razorbacks went from being a combined minus-31 to plus-2 in the rematches.
“We admitted that we got our butts kicked and we came back and we got another opportunity to play them,” Musselman said. “Even if we would have lost (Saturday), our disposition was much, much different in the second go-around with both of those teams we played this week and Missouri. We had completely different disposition from a toughness standpoint."
Arkansas returns to action Tuesday night at South Carolina. Tip off is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. CT and the game will be televised on the SEC Network.