NIT here we come..

Short of an upset win at Florida or South Carolina, or a Semifinal run in the SEC tourney, that is officially over now… This was clearly the biggest game Mizzou has ever played in their history, they had far more intensity, especially in the 1st half. Again free throw shooting comes back to kill the Hogs, probably mental more than anything else. The half empty arena early on had every noise echoing, which was a little different. Bottom line: They acted like it was the Super Bowl and they had never won a game before, coach hugging each of his players afterwards… LOL… They obviously wanted to win that game more than live, eat, or breathe, and they played with more intensity, that and free throw shooting was the deciding factor…

Not yet, until we see the RPI rankings later, we won’t know. BUT this will take a big hit to ours.

Still, we have opportunities and options left. Tennessee and Georgia losing today helps us out a lot more than people think, but our margin of error is now a big fat ZERO. We can still lose to SC and FLorida and MAYBE still make the NCAA tourney, but we can’t lose to the other 6 on our schedule. IF we beat the other 6 and pull off an upset of SC or FLorida, then we are in.

If we lose to someone we shouldn’t, then the SEC tourney is our only hope, depending on how many we lose.

Tweet from Ronnie Brewer: Losing is never good. But losing to a bad missouri team who is 5-16 overall and 0-9 in the sec is absurd. Very unacceptable just saying

Who cares about RPI. We just got beat by a cellar dweller! We don’t need to play in post season. For what reason. If that is how you show up for every road game get down and try coming back. This team is flat horrible and we have some cocky young men that need to learn what’s being called and adjust. If they really want to win. Piss poor performance all around! Don’t talk about NCAA or NIT. They need to earn it and tonight shows why the hogs are not respected nationally. Basketball or football

what a travesty considering we were in good shape to make ncaa’s barring a screw up and then we roll in MO and they shoot out of their minds while we lay a massive egg. to get in now i think we gotta beat FL or SC and win 2 n SEC tourney or beat both FL and SC and not go 1 and done n SEC’s.

if we had ever just took the lead when we made our run they would of folded. it broke our back when Kingsley grabbed that off. rebound and didnt put it back up and get fouled, instead he threw it to MO.

[quote=“GeneralHog”]
Not yet, until we see the RPI rankings later, we won’t know. BUT this will take a big hit to ours.

Still, we have opportunities and options left.

We could be winless and still have an opportunity, but realistically that loss was devastating to the NCAA’s. But Arkansas isn’t good enough anyway. They have enough talent, it’s just not consistent enough, they settle for the outside shot too much, instead of trying to get good quality looks on every possession. And the defense was horrendous for 90% of the game. The FT shooting was bad again… Need another all nighter practice IMHO, anytime a team beat’s you solely because of effort, then you have to send a message. One of these days Mike Anderson will learn what Nolan Richardson finally learned, Hawgball only works consistently if you own the glass. He needs to find more big men, Kingsley is very weak on Defense, on the boards, and his offensive game isn’t consistent enough. You got to have 2-3 big guys battling it out in the paint on every possession on both sides of the floor if you’re going to win consistently…

The tourney selection committee cares.

I just want to WIN!! and the only way we can do that is make your wide open threes. Big men gotta play bigger down low. Guards got to take care of the ball stop dribbling without a purpose and getting picked at critical times. Most importantly start with energy.

I want our guys to go to the NCAAs so bad I can taste it they win they can get there.

It happens, yes they played poorly as did several other teams in College BB today. I will not give up until selection Sunday and if it’s not the NCAAs I will be all in with the NIT and be proud of every win (we gotta start some where). It is what it is if the fans quit on 18-22 year olds every time they have a bad night what can we really expect from them.

By the way they played poorly the first half.

General is delusional. Everyone else knows we are terrible, but he’ll argue it no matter how ridiculous it is.

Just got off work and wanted to add my two cents. First, this wasn’t Andersons fault. This was the teams fault. At some point upper classmen need to start acting and leading like upper classmen. If the three isn’t falling, drive to the basket. The big man needs to stop running around the three point line thinking their Lebran James and plant themselves in the post and take it strong to the rim. If offensively, things aren’t clicking, knuckle down and play hardnosed defense and create opportunities. You want to make the Tournament, show up every time you hit the court and prove it. This team is soft and not mentally tough. No one has stepped up to be the leader on the court when things start to go wrong. If the upper classmen are not capable of leadership, then they should step aside and let the newcomers try. This teams chances of making the Tournament was almost buried tonight. If I was on the selection committee and had to chose tomorrow, I would not put Arkansas in the field. Getting really tired of being average in a mediocre basketball conference.

I would respectfully disagree. I am not someone who bashes the coaches in any sport, but the play is a reflection of coaching. Yes, the upperclassmen need to lead, but leadership starts at the top (coaches), not in the middle (coaches-top, upperclassmen- middle, underclassmen- bottom). The big men running around the three point line is a product of the system. It is what they have done under Anderson. Even Portis shot his share of mid to long range jumpers. The defense is horrid on this team (which is apparently a theme for Arkansas sports this year), but that starts with coaching. There is no consistent flow to the offense. They go through spurts where the offense looks more like street ball than organized ball. Anderson’s system is supposed to be built on up tempo, full court transition, but our full court press defense is terrible. You would think that a coach that builds his whole philosophy around this style of play would at least put a serviceable defense on the floor. This season is heading down the home stretch and I am not convinced they are playing any better now than at the start of the season. That is laid squarely at the feet of the coaching staff. Also, Hannahs has stepped up when things go wrong. He almost single handedly willed this team to beating Vanderbilt. Today, in the last couple minutes, he was the only one who hit a three when the team needed one. Part of the problem is after he hit that three, he didn’t touch the ball on the last couple possessions. The team reverted to its 1 on 5 street ball philosophy.

I think we watched the same game!!

Triple C, I agree with your post. I’ve been saying the problem is the style of play for years. I agree that all goes back to coaching. We picked up several fouls last night trying to double team people and left people wide open several times. Why do our big guys go out to the 3 point line to guard people on defense. Kingsley looked completely lost last night. He needs an attitude adjustment, technical should be unacceptable.

Hannahs can shoot, but his defense is the worst on the team. He makes a shot, and then on the other end they blow right by him for easy shots. Basketball is more than just shooting, defense is just as important, if not more…

players have come, players have gone. The results from Arkansas’s Basketball program is the same. If this were run like a business and not the emotional spin of ‘sports’, someone would be looking at the metrics. The metrics are tied to the decisions being made by the coaching staff. This is NOT a rant against the coaching staff. That said, those gentlemen make the decisions that show up in the metrics. Arkansas is consistently outrebounded, consistently give up the 3-point line, consistently do not get to the FT line, are consistently are out of position on defense and is almost always on the wrong side of the fouls called game. On the up side, Arkansas routinely wins the turnover battle.

So - add those up and come up with a reason why this team can win one hard game then turn around and lose an easier game (that, in and of itself is the most telling metric). Is it player skill? Uh … No. Is it (necessarily) coaching skill? Uh… no (but we’re getting warmer). Is it … is it the game plan (run and gun and hope you outrun the other team?) … dingdingdingding …

Coach MA - is it possible you cannot win consistently even with talent in today’s CBB with 40 MOH? The numbers - which DO not lie - say you cannot. Everyone - and as Missouri demonstrated - even 5 win teams - have athletes that get up and down the floor. 40 MOH is done. Let it go.

After this loss, things look pretty dire, I’ll admit. We have eight conference games left. We probably will make the tournament if we win six of them, while losing to Florida and South Carolina, or if we win at least five of them and one of the wins is against South Carolina or Florida. In addition we probably should win at least one game in the SEC tournament. I don’t hold out a lot of hope that either of these scenarios will happen. Most likely we end with around ten conference wins and maybe get an NIT bid. Very disappointing. Missouri (and perhaps LSU, too) was really the one team we could not afford to lose to and still make the tournament, assuming that we aren’t likely to win at S. Carolina or at Florida. What has gone wrong? Too many turnovers, inconsistent defense and rebounding. Kingsley is not the player we expected him to be after his spectacular junior year. I’m not sure why. I keep thinking that last year’s Kingsley is about to re-appear, but he doesn’t. Barford is starting to score prolifically, but too many turnovers. Macon has been mostly great, Beard improved, Hannahs about as we’d expected, usually a scoring machine. It’s the decline of Kingsley and the lack of any consistent scoring threat at the four spot that kills us. And why do we seem to consistently play no defense in the first half?

That loss to Missouri will be one of the single worst losses on any resume when the NCAA selection committee decides it’s tournament brackets.
Having said that our team has it’s destiny in their own hands and how they finish down the stretch.
They will have to win all of the remaining home games and at the very least win road games at LSU and Auburn. That would give them a regular season record of 23-8. I beilieve they would still need to win at least 1 SEC Tourney game in order to secure a spot in the NCAA Tourney field.
So, the next home game is the first must win on the remaining schedule.

The overall resume at this time doesn’t favor them being in the bracket this week following the inexcusable loss at Missouri and the blowout last week at Oklahoma State. Couple that with the fact that they home games this year to Florida and Mississippi State and the loss to Minnesota and you simply come to the conclusion that they really haven’t won a game against any team that may be an NCAA Tourney team outside possibly North Dakota and Mount Saint Mary.

I’m watching all the games and hope that they win their way in, but I believe the way they tend to get down in many of the SEC road games they could possibly lay an egg at either LSU or Auburn and that would seal their fate.
This team is not going to win at South Carolina or Florida and for any of you that believe they will probably still believes in Santa Claus.

On a positive note, an NIT Tourney birth would probably serve this program well because they would most likely be more competitive and get to play more games in a tournament environment which could fuel returning players to be more mentally tough going into next season. GO HOGS!

I’ll be satisfied this year with the NIT because we might win 3 games. We won’t win the NIT because our play is inconsistent. Some days we play like a top ten team. However, on other days we play like we are not in the top 300.

Sorry guys, but I still believe that the biggest problem on this team is the lack of leadership on the court. The style of defense you are condemning today, is the same style of defense you were praising after the Bama game. At some point, twenty somethings need to take responsibility for their game and play like they actually want to make the Tournament. Anderson can’t make shots, free throws, block out, or play defense for them. Again, leadership is the problem. Can anyone tell me the player or group of players the rest of the team turns to when things go wrong? From what I have observed, when thinks start going wrong, the players start looking at each other as if to say, " What do we do know?". I will concede that during the season, Anderson has not done a good job of calling a timeout to regroup the team when this happens. That is Anderson’s responsibility. But the players should share just as much in the blame for what happened.