Thanks Scottie. Good stuff as always. I continue to think our 3 point defense is a bit of an anomaly. 300th+ in the country. I suspect a good bit of randomness in that. Obviously need to tighten up but we work on it in practice as much as anyone I’d guess.
I think the #s will improve. Sometimes people you play just get hot regardless of how you defend.
I want to be positive but I don’t see any what you would call pure shooters on this team… JD will always be streaky, Lykes is the same way.
Umude I think has lost some confidence he’s not used to coming off the bench and I think that’s bothering him. I would actually like to see him start and see if he can get into a flow…
Devo has really improved his shot but I don’t think we can count on him to shoot the ball the way he did the other day.
I think this team’s best chance of success is to realize we are going to have to absolute swarm on defense for 40 minutes and get the game in the transition as much as we can because I don’t think we’re going to be a very good half court offensive team…
We certainly are not a good team the way we have shot the ball. Too many 3’s off the dribble and not enough assists. AND we need to shoot the ball better when we take our 3’s.
Our defense and rebounding were not good either.
Muss has to be busy this week. Our team’s play is not good enough to lose the rebounding and miss assignments that turn into easy baskets. I expect that a change is coming and you will see a totally different team by conference season.
While the thought is stay positive the lack of defense at times for 3 to 5 minutes spans drives me nuts. Then when the hogs get a run started and the come back is almost complete they get a rebound and do something stupid!
This years hogs can’t get out of their own way! The shots come from anywhere by anybody! Like I’ve said before the good the bad and the ugly!
The real good news they still haven’t played their best game yet!
One thing to consider an OU assistant was on the Hogs staff last season! That could have a played a role in the defensive effort OU played with.
One of the interesting things I found after re-watching the OU game and cataloging shots is Arkansas did not attempt a single field goal as a result of a cut to the rim. Not one. And only two shots came on dropoff-type passes. It was the first time all season the Razorbacks did not score at least once off a cut, which I think speaks volumes to the team’s at-times bogged down half-court play and lack of purposeful off-ball movement on Saturday. That can lead to forced shots.
Here is a rundown of FGM/FGA on cuts in each game:
Mercer - 4/5
Gardner-Webb - 1/1
Northern Iowa - 6/9
Kansas State - 2/5
Cincinnati - 3/5
Penn - 7/10
UCA - 3/5
UALR - 5/5
Charlotte - 5/6
Oklahoma - 0/0
The lack of movement was evident. I was in the arena and haven’t forced myself to re-watch, but live, it looked like OU was guarding us well, and we weren’t crisp screening and cutting after 10 seconds in the possession. What did you see? Great defensive execution or lack of effort/execution on our side?
OU did defend well. I kind of had a feeling Arkansas may be in for a long day when Jordan Goldwire early on cut off multiple dribble drives by Devo and JD. I felt like players off the ball made themselves easy to defend by not cutting hard or with much intention. Something else that jumped out was OU pretty consistently picked a Razorbacks defender with a ball screen. That rarely happened when Arkansas had possession. Having a great screener or two is incredibly valuable and helps the ball handler put a lot of pressure on a defense.
I’m just saying I thought OU’s ball screens were pretty effective at times and made more consistent contact with the defender it was intended for than Arkansas did.
