FAYETTEVILLE -- No. 14 Arkansas defeated Old Dominion 86-77 on Monday night in Bud Walton Arena.
The win was the third for the Razorbacks in as many games. Despite getting the win, Eric Musselman wasn't pleased with how his team played in some aspects. Old Dominion won the battle of the boards 39-35 despite Makhi Mitchell pulling down 10 rebounds to lead all players.
"We have to be way more physical defensive rebounding the basketball," Musselman said. "Way more physical. Defensively, 43% (by ODU), we’d obviously like our opponents to shoot a lower percentage. But the field goal percentage wasn’t the issue. It was the lack of three-point defense and certainly the lack of physicality.
"I mean, we’re going to be playing against teams that are much bigger, much stronger, much more athletic. And we’re not rebounding with any physicality. … It’s just not happening other than Mitchell. He’s our one guy that’s rebounded with physicality. I thought we were great against Purdue doing it, and we’ve really bad physically rebounders the last two games."
Old Dominion made 11-of-24 shots from behind the 3-point line for 46%. Devo Davis scored 16 points, had 5 rebounds and 2 assists along with 1 steal. He drew praise from Musselman who also highlighted some other positives from the win.
"Phenomenal," Musselman said. "I mean, Devo taking care of the ball, there’s some real positives, believe it or not. Defending without fouling is something we really worked on. We got the towels out. They had to hold the towels above their head [in practices] to stop touching people.
"The fouling was really good. How many foul shots did they take? Five (4 of 5). So defending without fouling, A-plus. Taking care of the basketball, I don’t know if I’ve ever had a team only have four turnovers against a high-steal team. Against a team that plays four guards at a time and has great quickness. So taking care of ball, A-plus.
"Defensive rebounding, Double-F. Transition defense, Triple-F. Guarding the three, there’s no guard it was so bad. So some good, and some very poor."
Louisville transfer guard El Ellis led the way for Arkansas with 17 points, 3 rebounds and 8 assists. Musselman took notice.
"El has done a really good job of asking for feedback on what we’re looking for," Musselman said. "I gave him a sheet today of the women’s coach at Duke [who] had some great quotes about being a point guard and what Pat Summitt had kind of taught her. I was on the treadmill and circled some stuff and gave it to El. He’s a guy that wants to…like he understands what areas want to see from him, which is taking care of the ball.
"And then quite honestly, late game, we’ve played three regular-season games and in this particular game late-game we went to El. It was him in middle pick-and-roll to try to get to the basket. We’ve had another game where we went to T-Mark late game. The good thing is we’re finding some strengths for different people in late-game situations or late-game packages."
Arkansas led 37-31 at the intermission. Mitchell added 15 points for a double-double. Khalif Battle added 13 points. Trevon Brazile had 11 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists and 4 blocked shots. Tramon Mark was limited to 21 minutes due to foul problems. He had 7 points and 6 rebounds.
Chaunce Jenkins led Old Dominion with 21 points adding 7 rebounds and 3 assists. Devin Ceaser added 18 points and R.J. Blakney 14. Old Dominion falls to 1-2 on the season.
Arkansas (3-0) will be at home on Friday to host UNC Greensboro and broadcast on SEC+.
Photos Courtesy of Craven Whitlow CW3 Sports Action
