Hoop Hogs making short work of opponents

FAYETTEVILLE — As a short man who played a tall man’s game, Eric Musselman seems ideally suited coaching the doubly short Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team.

The listed 5-foot-7 Razorbacks coach and long ago University of San Diego guard, proves it thus far with a 3-0 Arkansas start. Musselman coaches a short team. He also coaches a short bench.

Musselman has only eight scholarship players available with 6-8 sophomore Reggie Chaney under Musselman’s “indefinite” length disciplinary suspension.

The last two games he’s relied on seven.

Only guard Jalen Harris and forward Jeantal Cylla came off the bench behind Jimmy Whitt, Isaiah Joe, Mason Jones, Desi Sills and Adrio Bailey, the tallest at only 6-6 starter in 66-43 and 64-46 victories over the North Texas Mean Green and Montana Grizzlies.

Eventually some big, deep team jamming the ball inside seems bound to make Musselman’s men pay with foul trouble and fatigue.

But so far Musselman has made the opposition pay. He’s rotated seven with astonishing defensive cohesiveness.

Arkansas opened 91-43 over Rice, thus allowing no opponent yet to score beyond 46 points. Using Jones and Bailey, Musselman has turned lack of power forward and center height into a devastating quickness advantage.

“There’s no use saying what you don’t have,” Musselman said of his short team and short bench. “It’s kind of like, ‘All right, so we’ve got these guys and now we put them in these positions and you try to create mismatches.’”

That’s what Jones, a 6-5 junior guard averaging a team-leading 22.3 points and 6.0 rebounds playing power forward, and Bailey, a forward become a 6-6 senior center averaging 9.3 points and team-leading 8.3 rebounds, create.

“Adrio’s probably a lot more natural power forward or 4-man than a 5,” Musselman said. “But when he plays the 5 (center) spot, now he’s got quickness every night over the opponent’s 5.”

Musselman said that after the North Texas game, before Bailey posted his first career double-double, 12 points and career high 11 rebounds, against Montana.

Every postgame Musselman brags on Jones, an off guard excelling as his power forward.

“We have a guard-laden roster and we need him to play the power forward spot,” Musselman said. “Instead of wondering, ‘Hey I don’t want to do that,’ when he plays power he’s got his greatest mismatch.”

The short bench isn’t a long concern. Musselman tended playing just seven or eight going four years 110-34 coaching the University of Nevada.

From past NBA 82-game seasons coaching Golden State and Sacramento, Musselman dismisses fatiguing a college team scheduled for 30-plus.

It’s an opposite approach to the deep bench theory espoused by Hall of Fame former Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson.

But as Hall of Fame former Arkansas coach Eddie Sutton inevitably said before pitting contrasting styles vs. University of Houston Hall of Fame coach Guy Lewis, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

So far Musselman’s way skins three for three.