FAYETTEVILLE -- No. 21 Arkansas will be back in Bud Walton Arena Saturday night hosting Auburn at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN.
Arkansas (18-6, 8-3) should have extra motivation for this game. Auburn (14-10, 5-6) humiliated the Razorbacks 95-73 on Jan. 10 at Auburn. Arkansas' Chin Coleman knows Auburn has lost three games in a row, but they're still a very dangerous team.
"A lot of similarities of what they did and our game, they're obviously playing more through No. 7, so he had a big game against us up there at their place," Coleman said. "I'm thinking that they probably feel like he can duplicate that game. But for us as a whole, we are hopefully using this game to define that we're trending in the right direction of where we're going in terms of a program as it gets down to the stretch run. We want to be playing our best basketball here down the stretch run and leading into March and obviously on until the end of March. But we keep in our minds that we keep in a parking lot the outcome of that game. They got us pretty good, so we want to revenge that, but we also want to continue to trend in the right direction in terms of getting better."
No. 7 is Keyshawn Hall for Auburn. In the win over Arkansas, Hall scored 30 points, had two rebounds, five assists, one steal and two blocked shots. For the season, Hall is averaging 20.7 points, 6.8 rebounds and 2.7 assists while shooting 40.6% from distance.
"Yeah, we got to limit his one-on-one because he's a good one-on-one, through-him basketball player," Coleman said. "They iso saw him a lot. They set ball screens for him. They move him around. They move the pieces around with him in terms of, sometimes he's at the 3, sometimes he's at the 4. They play some small-ball 4 with him, and they do a really good job of kind of disguising him and not giving you the same exact look as much. But we have a plan, and then we also have a plan B of how we're going to guard him in terms of trying to limit his FGAs. We don't want him to get 20 or more attempts at the basket, we want to at least try to cut those attempts down in half. So if he can get up 12 to 13 FGAs in that that that favors us, but if he's in the high teens, up into the 20s —hopefully he doesn't get to the high 20s — then we've done our job in terms of limiting his catches, limiting his FTAs, then that that plays in our favor."
As far as the Razorbacks, Coleman was asked about the status of Karter Knox and D.J. Wagner, who have missed the last two games with injuries.
"Yesterday they had some limited moments in practice, so we’ll see where that progresses today in practice," Coleman said. "But they all had — Malique Ewin, DJ and Karter — all had some limited moments in practice yesterday, so that’s a positive."
Ewin suffered a cut in the win over LSU as well that required stitches. True freshman Isaiah Sealy has seen some playing time since the two were injured.
"So excited for him and happy for him and appreciative of him, because it's hard to be in a position that he's in and to have to be ready when your number is called, so to speak," Coleman said. "He obviously was ready. The best part about it is we had that bye week, and so he was able to have some good reps in practice, and he had some really good things in practice. So him going out in that game against Mississippi State and playing as a positive was not something that shocked us because of the preparation.
"His practice week was really good. He has shown that he gives us another guy that can give us some more athleticism, some more length, some more size and some more energy and motor. He flies around, and when you fly around and play as hard as he plays, you can make mistakes. We're OK with the mistakes, as long as they're the mistakes that he's making, that he's just flying around, playing with the reckless abandonment, and then we can live with those mistakes. And so happy about him having another piece to go to. I think he's earned the right to be comfortable, for Coach to be comfortable, if he had to put him in the game. I think that we're all OK with it."
Coleman was asked with Auburn coming in struggling does that change anything as far as preparation?
"Absolutely, but we’ve got to control what we can control," Coleman said. "Hopefully they’ve got more problems than we have when we step out on the floor, and we want to be able to control our controllables. That is our home court, keeping in mind that obviously they beat us the time that we beat them (?). We're not trying to allow for them to sweep us. They have what they're going through, their issues, what they're going through. We know that there's going to be a sense of urgency, some desperation in terms of how they play, but we’ve got to have some sense of urgency and some desperation on defending our home court and returning the favor from the separation they were able to get on us at their place."
Regardless of what happened against Auburn earlier in the season, Coleman is just glad to get them in Bud Walton Arena where the team is 12-1 on the season.
"Well, it's a very hostile environment in Auburn, probably one of the toughest places in the league to play," Coleman said. "It's not a huge gymnasium, but it's small, it's compact and it's full of students. It's more students in Auburn than there are the common fan. They're mostly students, and the students are loud, they really support their ball club. We were hoping that we get a good home crowd advantage, which we've had a lot of, and we just hope that that trend continues on Saturday. And to give us an extra boost. We can't owe them, right? They put it to us up there, and so we want to make sure that we return the favor."