Hogs host Kentucky; hope to stop losing skid
FAYETTEVILLE -Arkansas will return to Bud Walton Arena on Saturday evening hosting Kentucky with hopes of stopping a losing skid that has reached two games in a row having lost five of the past six contests.
Arkansas (10-9, 1-5) is 8-3 in Bud Walton Arena with its lone SEC win coming over Texas A&M on Tuesday, Jan. 16.
The Razorbacks won a 78-77 thriller on Tramon Mark’s last-second shot. Kentucky (14-4, 4-2) is coming of a 79-62 loss to South Carolina this past Tuesday.
Due to migraines, Mark missed Wednesday’s
77-51 loss at Ole Miss. In addition, Trevon
Brazile injured his knee and didn’t get to play in the second half. Eric Musselman talked about injuries.
“Hopefully I’ve coached in enough places and understand that injuries are part of the game,” Musselman said. “Like
I said, an injury allows another player to get an opportunity that maybe he thought he should have or wants to have. It’s got to be next man up mentality. I don’t know what other way to say injuries are part of what happens.
“Justin Smith was injured for a five-game stretch and other guys got an opportunity. We struggled when Justin was out. We struggled when Isaiah Joe was out. But we were able to win a big game against TCU, and some guys stepped up when Isaiah was out. That’s part of it. Last year, TB was out for an entire season and we had other guys get the minutes that TB would’ve played last year.”
The problems for this Arkansas team though have gone beyond injuries.
“Right now, we’re a team that we lost four guys that have played in an NBA game this year,” Musselman said. “Right now, that’s a lot to replace as we’re starting to see this thing unfold before
us. There’s not a lot of teams in college basketball that had four players from one team go on to play in the NBA. And then
you try to figure out what you can do and right now obviously we’re struggling on both sides of the ball.
“You want senior leadership. You want guys to embrace. But we want all of our guys… I want our freshmen excited, we want our seniors excited, we want everybody excited. We don’t have many games left, although we still have a lot left in conference play and we’ve got to try to figure out a way to get better.”
Musselman has insisted this team practices well, but it certainly hasn’t translated to the games. Musselman was asked why that seems to be the case?
“Well right now, teams are just outplaying us,” Musselman said. “You can have great practices, but teams have size on us at certain positions. I’ll say it once and I’ll say it 100 times, I’d rather have a team play well in games and not practice well. We’ve had some guys not practice well over the last three years, but certainly produced in the game.”
Senior guard Antonio Reeves leads the Wildcats in scoring at 19.2 points per game. Reeves also averages 4.4 rebounds and 1.6 assists each game. Senior forward Tre Mitchell tops Kentucky in rebounding at 7.5 per game and 1.3 blocks. Mitchell also averages 13.6 points and 3.3 assists each game.
Freshman guard Reed Sheppard leads Kentucky with 4.0 assists and
2.4 steals each outing. Sheppard averages 11.3 points and 4.1 rebounds per game as well. Other key players for Kentucky are freshman guards
Rob Dillingham and D.J. Wagner. Dillingham averages 13.9 points, 3.1 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.3 steals each game. Wagner has statistics of 12.2 points, 1.9 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.1 steals per game.
Freshman guard Justin Edwards is projected as a lottery pick in the upcoming 2024 NBA Draft. Edwards averages 8.1 points and 3.9 rebounds per game. Freshman forward Aaron Bradshaw is projected as a secondround pick by ESPN. He averages 7.0 points and 4.7 rebounds per game.