Special to Nate Allen Sports Service
Arkansas will now head to Texas A&M to face a team they beat once, but the Razorbacks are coming off one of the worst losses of the season.
Arkansas (17-8, 6-6) is 11-2 at Bud Walton Arena. One of those losses was to now No. 1ranked Alabama 84-69 on Jan. 11. The other was to Mississippi State 70-64 this past Saturday. The Razorbacks beat Texas A&M 81-70 on Jan. 31, but the Aggies had to battle a snow storm and only made it to Fayetteville a few hours before the game.
In the first game, Arkansas was without freshman guard Nick Smith Jr. who returned on Saturday against Mississippi State. He scored five points in 17 minutes. Eric Musselman talked about how he's trying to integrate Smith back into the gameplan with minutes also obviously going to Anthony Black, Devo Davis and Ricky Council IV.
"Well, I think that obviously with Nick coming back, you know he played 17 minutes, which is 17 more minutes than obviously when he wasn’t in uniform," Musselman said. "This is kind of like, it’s almost like our sixth team that we’ve built with when you look at you know the first team we had Nick and TB (Trevon Brazile) through that Texas exhibition game in the summer. Then there was that team with no Nick through Maui. Then the team with Nick and TB against San Jose State for the one game we had the roster together, just the one game.
"Then a fourth team with no-TB and Nick. Then a fifth team with no TB and no Nick. And a sixth team now with Nick. So how minutes, roles, how that gets defined is going to be based on how guys are playing and how the team is playing. We knew that any time a player comes back there’s an adjustment for not just the player that’s been sitting out but for the other guys as well. So you know, I mean, not a lot of teams are making that adjustment this late in the year and obviously we are. So hopefully we’ll play better than we did against Mississippi State."
Smith is projected to be a high pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. Considering Smith hadn't played since Dec. 17, Musselman listed the areas where he can be better in his second game back.
"I think just him gaining experience with the current roster," Musselman said. "We don’t have a lot of time to figure this whole thing out. Every game is magnified from here on out. We have three weeks left in this season. It’s our job to try to do everything we can to win as many games as we can with a very difficult schedule. So that’s what we have to do. That’s our main concern. Our main concern is how do we win as many as we possibly can over this three-week, six-game segment."
The Razorbacks defeated the Aggies by 11 points despite 20 fewer attempts from the field, 76-56, in the first meeting.
"You never want someone to win the possession game ever let alone win the possession game by 20," Musselman said. "We made some conscious efforts in the last game that made us susceptible to offensive rebounds, and on the flip side it might have gotten the ball out of certain players' hands for them. It might have sped the game up slightly a little bit more. We'll obviously need to do a better job, a significantly better job, defensively in blocking out.
"Like I said, Coach (Buzz) Williams is a great coach. He's going to make adjustments. There's zero doubt in my mind he will tweak things and make adjustments, and we certainly cannot go into this game with the exact same game plan either. As you mentioned there were some holes of things we gave up in Game 1 even though we did win the game and led for most of the game. We have to do better in a lot of areas with this being a road game."
The pace of the offense against the Aggies is something that Musselman addressed on Monday.
"Yeah, we played pretty well against Texas A&M in the home game at our place," Musselman said. "They’re really well coached. They understand their roles. They do a good job every night of getting people to eat shot clock up. They’re two different teams, A&M and Mississippi State. Both of them are very good basketball teams. Both of them have grind-it-out type styles. But I thought we did a pretty good job in game one against A&M.
"They’ll make some adjustments. We’ll certainly try to make some adjustments. And pace of play every night is important for both teams that are playing. Sometimes when we don’t run we don’t turn the ball over as much as well. So hopefully going on the road we’ll play better than we did the other night on Saturday against Mississippi State."
Davis has been the steadying force for Arkansas in recent games before Saturday. However, against Mississippi State, Davis was 2 of 11 from the field and scored only seven points. Musselman was asked if he talked to Davis following the rough outing against the Bulldogs?
"I think as a coach, you always want to try to talk to you players after games, both individually and collectively as a group," Musselman said. "So when we talk about film today, we’ll go through different things as a group and certainly it’s important for me to talk with guys individually, whether it be pre-practice, postpractice, discuss matchups, discuss prior games, whatever it may be. But Devo, he’s been around long enough and he’s had such an impact on us, both sides of the basketball this year, so I’m not really overly concerned with him bouncing back."
Sophomore guard Wade Taylor IV leads the Aggies with 15.2 points, 4.1 assists and 1.7 steals each outing. He's averaging 2.8 rebounds as well each game. Musselman described what makes Taylor such a tough cover.
"I think the thing with Taylor is he's got deep range," Musselman said. "He's confident. He's got great speed, and he's also got great quickness. He's improved as a ball-handler. Maybe more of a two, a shooting guard, in the past but he's evolved into playing the point guard position for them. He's done a great job.
"Their backcourt is a really difficult backcourt to contain because both Taylor and (Tyrece) Radford can dribbledrive and shoot with distance and range. They both can handle the ball in pick and rolls. And then (Andre) Gordon even, people don't talk about it. I don't know how many games he's started as a college player in the SEC, but it's probably in the 60 range with him as a starter. He's now coming off the bench. So three guards, all have specific roles and contribute in different ways for Texas A&M."
Radford is putting up good numbers as well. He's averaging 13.6 points, 5.4 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 0.8 steals each game. He presents several challenges to the Hogs.
"Well 1- he’s got great toughness, 2- he’s a really good defender, he’s an excellent rebounder for his position, he’s a high-volume free throw attempt player," Musselman said. "He’s a dynamic scorer. I think he took 19 shots last game, in Game 1 against us. So he’s a focal point of their offense, obviously. Crafty in the pick-and-rolls. Maybe earlier in his career he was more of a screen-setter in pick-and-rolls. Now they’ll have him as a ball handler in pick-and-rolls. He’s just versatile. He can play the 1 through 4 and there’s not a lot of guys in college basketball who can play 1 through 4 and be equally effective in all four positions."
Texas A&M (18-7, 10-2) gets to the charity stripe more than any team in the country which is an obvious concern for Musselman.
"Well, we draw a lot of fouls too, so hopefully two teams that relentlessly attack the rim," Musselman said. "I thought we did a pretty good job of late of going vertical, which would tend to say there's not going to be as many free throws attempted. So we'll continue to work today and tomorrow and going vertical, continue to work on trying to keep our man in front of us so as not to give up too many free throws attempted by the opposition. And then conversely, we'll continue to work on trying to draw fouls on our end."
Musselman was asked what the Aggies do to get so many free throws?
"Well, I mean, I think it starts with Radford," Musselman said. "He's strong. He's got 3-point range, drives hard to the rim. And then you've got inside guys and (Henry) Coleman and (Julius) Marble that are good paint scorers. And then you add in guys like (Solomon) Washington and (Andersson) Garcia. Those two up front, offthe-bench guys come in, and they're really, really active and very aggressive. That being 13 Washington and 11 Garcia. So you add all that together, and (Dexter) Dennis is a guy that can make threes and can put some pressure on the rim as well, and so it's an aggressive team on both sides of the ball."
Wednesday's game tips at 8 p.m. and will be televised on ESPN2. The Aggies are 12-1 in Reed Arena with the lone loss coming Dec. 20 to Wofford 6762 when they were struggling. They are undefeated at home in SEC play.