Hogs closing the gap on SEC elite

FAYETTEVILLE — The Arkansas Razorbacks will lose big again.

Every program sometime suffers that game simply outmanned. Or the Murphy’s Law game where all goes wrong regardless of foe.

But never with Sam Pittman at the Hogs helm expect Arkansas beaten before kickoff.

That’s a losing battle too often besetting recent Razorbacks teams, especially during the 2018 and 2019 0-8, 0-8 SEC campaigns of Chad Morris’ overmatched regime.

Pittman last year changed that nine times out of 10.

The Hogs went 3-7 in an all SEC campaign. It should have been 4-6 but for a SEC admitted officiating error. Arkansas played competitively every game but the last.

Per usual it was Alabama. Nick Saban’s national champion Crimson Tide slaughtered the Hogs, 52-3 in Fayetteville.

Pittman’s now 7-4 overall/3-4 in the SEC Razorbacks played the nationally No. 2 now SEC West champion, 10-1, 6-1 Tide Saturday in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Alabama won but it was no slaughter. The Hogs were a before they could snare it bouncing out of bounds onside kick away from assembling one last upset chance before Alabama prevailed, 42-35.

Pittman and his Hogs so firmly believed that they refused to accept what most deem a moral victory for a 20-point underdog on the road.

“We did not come here to lose by seven,” Pittman said. “We came to win the game and I think you could see that by the way that we played.”

Saban expected nothing less. “I knew they had a good team and I knew it was going to be a tough game,” Saban told CBS postgame.

Pittman told his team every opponent facing his Hogs should expect the same.

“I just told them, ‘The days of getting kicked around and getting our teeth kicked in are over,” Pittman said. “We matched the physicality that Alabama is known for.”

The belief that Pittman instilled is the belief that brought “super senior” linebacker Grant Morgan back for the extra year option granted seniors of the 2020 covid disrupted season.

A married pre-med honors student from Greenwood already with a masters degree, Morgan easily could have moved on. He’d done enough knowing as originally a walk-on he had paid dues through Bret Bielema and Morris years and re-surged the Razorbacks as a 2020 All-American.

“If it was any other coach I wouldn’t have come back this season,” Morgan said. “Coach Pittman is probably the most genuine person I’ve ever been around. He loves this football team so much. He knows what it means to be an Arkansas Razorback. He knows what it takes. He acts it. He lives it.”

And he believes it and instilled that belief to a program previously in doubt.

“We’re a team that keeps getting better and better,” Morgan said. “We’re on the rise.”

A short week looms with Missouri coming Friday to Fayetteville for the Hogs to shed the pain and strain of their titanic Tuscaloosa tussle.

Pittman has them believing they will.