Again, I like Mike Anderson, and hopefully, he will figure this thing out. Yet, starting the game against a Vanderbilt team at a 25 to 4 deficit is alarming. Playing uninspired or emotionally “flat” ball while losing a home game to Vandy, by 13 points, is more alarming - especially this time of year.
One of Anderson’s comments really caught my attention. “The way that game started out, man, Vanderbilt, they were on fire,” Anderson said. “It seemed like we couldn’t do anything to slow them down, and it looked like it was going to be a big-time rout. But to our guys credit, I thought in the second half we came out and played with a little more fight and a little more defensive awareness to make them uncomfortable.”
Under the circumstances, with everything on the line, if anyone should have been made to feel uncomfortable in the game, from start to finish, it was Vandy. Since that clearly wasn’t the case, the Arkansas guys playing with the lack of a “little more fight and defensive awareness” should have experienced some extreme discomfort, by Anderson and staff, from the opening tip forward, in my opinion.
Come on, Mike. Nolan wasn’t always a nice guy, but he was one helluva coach.
I’m sure Anderson was as embarrassed as the rest of us, no doubt more so, by what he saw last night. He had to say something to the press, but what can you say after that performance? I’m sure he just didn’t want to be there, said something, anything, whatever, and left. He’s just not the type to throw a chair or choke a player, thankfully. On the other hand, his team needs a lot of work. It often doesn’t defend, especially threes, and that killed us last night. But still, had we shot as we did against Alabama, or even just close to that, we’d have won. It’s rare we can’t score more than 72 points at home, so as bad as our defense was, we still should have scored enough to win. The ball just wouldn’t go in the hoop last night - tragically for us. How many lay-ups were missed?
I’m sure Anderson was as embarrassed as the rest of us, no doubt more so, by what he saw last night. He had to say something to the press, but what can you say after that performance? I’m sure he just didn’t want to be there, said something, anything, whatever, and left. He’s just not the type to throw a chair or choke a player, thankfully. On the other hand, his team needs a lot of work. It often doesn’t defend, especially threes, and that killed us last night. But still, had we shot as we did against Alabama, or even just close to that, we’d have won. It’s rare we can’t score more than 72 points at home, so as bad as our defense was, we still should have scored enough to win. The ball just wouldn’t go in the hoop last night - tragically for us. How many lay-ups were missed?
[/quote]Regardless of the first half, Vandy still outscored us in the 2nd half and without a doubt, with a huge lead, they were playing more conservative. Therefore, that is not a game Arkansas could have worn.
Our defense is what’s got into the mess we are in at the present time. You can have a bad night shooting as every team experiences through the season it happens. But to have a bad night playing defense is just a lack of hustle,effort and desire to win plain and simple or your team doesn’t understand what your coaching them to do or they are not being coached on defense period. I don’t know which one of those reasons it is but we have to figure it out soon to get back into the hunt. Before anyone tells me that Vandy was hitting every shot they put up you have to understand that they should because 90% of the time they were wide open from 3 pt. range our driving to the basket for a layup. Better defense is the only thing that will get us back in for the dance, IMHO. WPS