Razorback freshman guard Anthony Black (#0) from Duncanville, TX drives to the basket against South Dakota State Wednesday night at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville, AR.
By Otis Kirk
FAYETTEVILLE -- No. 9 Arkansas used a tenacious defense to defeat South Dakota State 71-56 Wednesday night in Bud Walton Arena.
South Dakota State was playing a back-to-back which is unusual in the regular season in a non-tournament setting. Arkansas' defense held South Dakota State to 32 percent (18-56) from the field and 19 percent (3-16) from behind the 3-point line.
Eric Musselman was obviously pleased with the defense for most of the game. Arkansas was leading 41-29 at the intermission, but took control of the game for much of the second half. The Hogs led 64-37 with 8:39 remaining in the game. However they were outscored 19-7 the remainder of the game.
"I thought defensively we were phenomenal until maybe the last 10 minutes of the game," Musselman said. "I thought we really did an excellent job defensively to especially three 3s. That was the gameplan coming in we were just not going to give up 3-balls. We've held all of our opponents under five to my knowledge. Really happy with our 3-point defense it was absolutely incredible."
An area where Musselman wasn't as pleased was the turnovers. Both teams had 20 and that number on his Hogs obviously wasn't pleasing to the coach.
"We have to take care of the ball better," Musselman said. "We've done a decent job these first two games. Tonight we kind of went backwards in getting the shot on goal. 20 turnovers against South Dakota State. They're not a high turnover team. They kept the lane packed and we kept driving into traffic."
Arkansas was led by Ricky Council IV with 19 points. He also added two rebounds, a pair of assists, a steal and one blocked shot. He was one of four Razorbacks in double figures scoring.
Davonte Davis and Trevon Brazile each added 13 points while Jordan Walsh had 10. For Brazile, it was another double-double game. He also had 10 rebounds to lead all players in that stat. Brazile also had two assists, a pair of blocked shots and one steal.
Anthony Black had five points, five rebounds, five assists and four steals. Makhi Mitchell added five points, four rebounds, three assists and a steal as well.
Musselman talked about what has allowed this team to be such a good defensive team against the 3-point shot in particular.
"We've done a really good job of picking the ball up trying to turn people over," Musselman said. "Our steals, 14 steals, is a lot of steals in a basketball game. Anthony Black did a great job with his anticipation tonight and so did Jordan Walsh."
Arkansas had 17 assists on 28 made baskets. Musselman talked about the team sharing the basketball and had a stat from tonight's game that pleased him and wasn't there the first two games.
"We had 231 passes tonight," Musselman said. "We have been well below 200 up until tonight. So an excellent job of letting the ball have eyes."
Arkansas shot 46 percent (28-61) from the field and 32 percent (7-22) from behind the 3-point line. The Razorbacks weren't good at the free throw line on Wednesday night hitting only eight of 15 attempts. The Hogs won the battle of the boards 42-32 including 33 on the defensive end.
Zeke Mayo and Luke Appel each had nine points to lead South Dakota State (2-2). Mayo also led the team with eight rebounds.
Arkansas (3-0) will now leave Friday morning for the Maui Jim Maui Invitational. They will open play Monday at 4 p.m. against Louisville and televised on ESPN2.
Louisville is amazingly 0-3 on the season having lost three games by one point each. Louisville has lost to Bellarmine 67-66, Wright State 73-72 and Appalachian State 61-60.
