Razorback junior guard Ricky Council IV (#1) from Durham, NC sinks a free throw against Missouri Wednesday night at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville. Photo by Craven Whitlow
by Otis Kirk
FAYETTEVILLE -- No. 13 Arkansas' road woes in the SEC continued on Saturday night with Arkansas falling to No. 22 Auburn 72-59.
Auburn basically led from start to finish in the game with the lead as high as 15 points, 42-27 with 17:26 remaining in the game. Arkansas missed 15 layups and only hit 19 of 32 free throws. Arkansas' Anthony Black scored 23 points and was 13 of 16 at the charity stripe. Eric Musselman praised his effort, but wasn't too happy otherwise.
"Obviously it’s really frustrating," Musselman said. "We can’t miss that many foul shots. The thing that’s the most amazing is Anthony Black went 13 of 16 from the foul line. So if you look at the rest of the team. But the only thing I know is you’ve got to get in the gym on your own. That’s something that’s been part of our culture. Guys working relentlessly on their game outside of practice.
"That’s got to improve for sure. We have some guys that need to share the basketball a little bit more from an offensive standpoint, because we are struggling to score the ball. Everybody knows it. The three-point shooting, you’re not just going to miraculously wake up and all of a sudden become a great three-point shooting team. So you’ve got to figure out other ways to try to put points on the board.
"But I thought Anthony Black was absolutely spectacular offensively, and we didn’t have much else besides that."
Black talked about Arkansas' 59-percent shooting at the free throw line and the outcome of the game.
"It’s crazy," Black said. "We missed 13 free throws and we lost by 13. We missed a couple easy ones, offensive rebound putbacks. Couldn’t hit a shot, myself included. Just gotta be better and be smarter and capitalize on whenever the defense gives us free ones."
In the first 20 minutes, Black had five points, one rebound and three assists. In addition to scoring 18 second-half points, Black also pulled down seven rebounds, dished out four assists and had a blocked shot as well as one steal. Musselman was asked if he talked to Black at halftime or if the true freshman just put it on himself to have a big second half?
"Well, I think a little bit of both," Musselman said. "He was the guy that the atmosphere didn’t affect him and I thought he… When he saw that we weren’t getting much, he took it upon himself to be way more aggressive offensively. We needed him to. I thought that the first-half foul trouble really threw us off. But again, there’s no excuse. You take two really talented players off of any team in the country, two players like (Trevon) Brazile and Nick Smith, we have to figure out how to play better basketball."
Losing Brazile for the season to an ACL injury and Smith for an undetermined time has definitely made what appeared to be a very promising season much harder for Musselman's Hogs. It wasn't just offensively where the Hogs struggled, they also only came up with four steals in the game.
"The defensive game plan has not changed other than the execution by some of our guys," Musselman said. "We had four steals tonight, and two of them were by our power forward/center Kamani Johnson. So that kind of tells you what our perimeters did from a defensive creating turnovers standpoint. Not much at all.
"You can’t play 35, 36 minutes and not have a steal in our system. And we’re struggling shooting. Inexperience and winning on the road is problematic with this group, as well. And getting off to first-half starts has been pretty problematic, as well."
The atmosphere at Neville Arena was a loud, packed crowd. The Tigers and their fans wanted revenge for the loss at Arkansas last season. It was extremely loud even before the game started. Did the atmosphere hamper the others outside of Black?
"I don’t know," Musselman said. "I mean, I guess that there’s plenty of you guys on here that probably watched it on TV and that would have to be your opinion. I haven’t gone back and watched the film. I’m emotionally into the game and trying to figure out what play calls and how our defensive coverages are, so that would be up to you guys to determine if some guys didn’t play like they do at home."
The start to the game, in some ways, provided a preview of what was to come. Wendell Green was fouled shooting and making a 3-point shot. He converted the free throw and Auburn led 4-0 just 14 seconds into the game.
"I mean, you play on the road and you give up a 4-point play, it’s hard to recover from that," Black said. "They started the game with a lot of momentum. They just took it and ran with it. It’s hard to win on the road. We’ve got to start off games better, to be honest."
Musselman also expressed dismay at the 4-point play to start action.
"The 4-point play, I don't know if I've ever been a part of a game that started that way," Musselman said. "Devo (Davis) picked up two really quick fouls. Our most experienced player on the team. You're minus two starters, he picks up two fouls. You saw the results."
Ricky Council IV added 14 points and two rebounds to join Black in double-figure scoring.
On the other hand, Auburn was led by Green with 19 points, three rebounds, five assists and three steals. John Broome had 10 points, 10 rebounds and six blocks. Allen Flanigan chipped in 18 points, eight rebounds, two assists and a pair of steals.
Arkansas (12-3, 1-2) now has dropped both its road games in the SEC. They also fell to LSU 60-57 on Dec. 28. Arkansas is 8-0 in Bud Walton Arena. They will return there to host No. 7 Alabama on Wednesday night with a 6 p.m. tip and televised on ESPN2. Following the Alabama game the Hogs will have to go to Vanderbilt and Missouri next.
"We can look at this stretch," Musselman said. "We can look at the end of the year when we go at Alabama and at Tennessee. Until we figure out how to play better on the road, how to play more composed... Every game is tough, so I don't look at this stretch any different than any other stretch we have. You can pick any three-game segment in the league, and the way the league is it's challenging."
The Tide rolls into Bud Walton with a 13-2 record including 3-0 in the SEC. They have beaten Mississippi State 78-67, Ole Miss 84-62 and then thumped Kentucky 78-52 on Saturday.