Two games into the Bahamas trip and Arkansas has outscored its opponents by a combined 79 points.
The 98-58 win over Carleton followed a 106-59 rout of the Bahamas National Team the night before and neither game was ever really in doubt.
Carleton isn’t a bad measuring stick at this point because it is against players not in practices in Fayetteville.
The Ravens are Canada’s reigning national champs and they’ve won 18 titles as a program. It’s not like Arkansas beat up on a club team. Still, it’s not the SEC and it never will be.
That’s the tricky part about summer exhibitions. Jordan Smith Jr. put up a 20-point, 11-rebound, 11-assist triple-double and Jeremiah Wilkinson scored a game-high 26. Neither stat line means much once the calendar flips to November.
The Hogs won’t see many teams shooting 29.4% from the field the way Carleton did in the first half.
None of that is a knock on the effort. Arkansas closed the first half on a 27-3 run and finished the game shooting 58.3% from the floor before halftime, numbers that would hold up against anybody.
It’s just worth remembering who was standing across from them.
Chin Coleman, serving as acting head coach for the game, gave Carleton its due for making things tough early.
“They came out with the physical mindset to start the game and I loved it,” Coleman said. “To see what we’re made of. So those guys kind of made it hard for us for about the first 10 minutes of the game. But give credit to Canada, played a tough game. They had a game plan and then we kind of wore them down with our numbers.”
Wearing teams down with numbers works in the Bahamas. It’s a different story once Arkansas is facing SEC size and SEC athletes every night starting in the fall.
Shooting not missing piece any more
Here’s the part of this trip that actually matters going forward.
Arkansas has had stretches under multiple coaches where shooting was the problem, nights where the Hogs couldn’t buy a jumper and had to grind out wins on defense and offensive rebounds alone.
That hasn’t been the story in the Bahamas.
Wilkinson went 5 of 9 from three against Carleton and Smith drilled a jumper right at the halftime buzzer to cap the big run. As a team Arkansas shot 58.3% from three-point range in the first half, which isn’t a typo.
That’s the kind of shooting that changes what a Calipari roster can look like on offense.
John Calipari made a point of saying he trusts Smith’s jumper even on the nights it isn’t falling, which tells you something about how the staff views this backcourt.
“If he’s making a bunch of shots, we’re in very good shape,” Calipari said on the FloSports broadcast. “But we can win without him making shots. And he is a way better shooter than people will give him credit for.”
That last line is the one worth holding onto.
A roster that can shoot gives a coach options a roster that can’t shoot never has. Arkansas has had talented teams before that couldn’t space the floor, and that limitation showed up against SEC length in March.
Two games in the Bahamas won’t prove this team has fixed that for good, but it’s a real signal, not a mirage.
Frontcourt still has homework but you can’t teach length
Where Arkansas still has work to do is on the interior.
Carleton actually won the second-half rebounding battle 20-24 despite trailing by 30-plus points, and that’s the kind of detail that gets buried under a final score like 98-58.
Post play and interior toughness are still a work in progress for this group.
The good news is the raw material is there. Caleb Ourigou is already showing off the kind of length that shows up blocking shots at the rim.
JJ Andrews and Abdou Toure both gave the Hogs size on the glass and in double figures scoring against Carleton.
Coleman explained why that length matters so much even in a backcourt built around two guards.
“They’re both plus-10 athletes for their size,” Coleman said. “So whatever size you guys wanna give Jeremiah, he has a 45-inch vertical. He’s got long arms like Darius had, so his club’s athleticism gives him the ability to do so much.”
Athleticism and length are the parts of a roster you genuinely can’t coach into existence. You can teach footwork and you can teach a post move, but you can’t teach a 45-inch vertical or a longer wingspan.
Arkansas has that piece already sitting on the roster.
What still needs building is the polish, the physicality on the glass every single possession and the habits that hold up once SEC big men start pushing back.
None of that gets solved against Carleton or Toros del Valle, the Colombian pro champs Arkansas play Monday.
It gets solved in November and December when the games actually count.
But for a team that can already shoot it at a high level and already has the length to develop, the Bahamas trip gave Arkansas basketball fans a reasonable head start on optimism heading into the season.
Key takeaways
- Arkansas’s back-to-back Bahamas blowouts came against overmatched competition, so the real test still waits until SEC play begins.
- The Razorbacks showed real shooting improvement, hitting 58.3% from three-point range in the first half against Carleton, an area that’s hurt past Arkansas teams.
- The interior game still needs development, but the length and athleticism on the roster give the frontcourt a foundation that can’t be taught.
