Last time we did that was the last time we played in Iowa, a loss to ISU in 2014. But that was because the Cyclones shot 64% and didn’t have many misses to rebound. Also the lowest OR total in an Arkansas NCAA game ever; previous low was 4 by Villanova in 1988 (another loss); Nova shot 56% that day.
Has an Arkansas team ever won an NCAA game with just four assists? Hard to imagine.
HogStats says the previous low for assists in an NCAAT win was 7 against Nebraska.
Kamani had more ORs himself (4) than the entire Illinois team.
HogStats also confirms that one of those 3 ORs was a missed front half of a 2-shot foul, what used to be called a dead ball rebound. We had no opportunity to grab that one. So they only actually rebounded two of their misses.
I think the Illinois staff really did not believe that we could shoot well enough in one on one situations to beat them, and saw how hard our team looks to make inside passes. So they decided not to have much help defense on guards who dribbled the ball from 20 feet in to about 8-10 feet. There were a few stretches where it worked with Smith, Black and Davis, but it did not work near well enough to win the game.
There seemed to be more room for our guards to operate moving towards the basket then the last few games, especially late in the clock. Part of that was there was a lot less standing around on offense, part of it was that Illinois just did not have four defenders who could consistently stay in front of Black, Davis, Smith and Council. We made up for the lack of assists by scoring on enough isolation plays, hit a few threes and getting points off defense.
Only the second game since 2010-11 that Arkansas won with four or fewer assists. The other game was against Troy in November.