Credit Arkansas’ 69-66 win over Vanderbilt on Tuesday night to Keyshawn Embery-Simpson.
Oh, the usual names at the top of scoring summary for the Razorbacks were there, but it was the Oklahoma freshman that stepped up and hit the key shot when it was needed most.
And it saved the day for a team that had come back from another stumbling start to take a 10-point lead in the second half … only to see it evaporate.
Fans had seen it before and many in the small, intimate, gathering of 6,347 were squirming in their seats.
It cued what resulted in a dramatic comeback for a team that somehow seems to find ways to keep these nail-biters going.
The Hogs were behind the Commodores when Embery-Simpson got loose when Daniel Gafford was double-teamed and he hit a 3-pointer with 14 seconds left for a 67-66 lead. Mason Jones added a pair of late free throws for the final margin after drawing a charge.
“He turned it down earlier, but he nailed the biggest one,” Mike Anderson said later.
This is now the second game in a row that Embery-Simpson has made a big difference. He scored 16 in Baton Rouge on Saturday in that win, now this.
“Whatever it takes to get the team the win,” he said later. “The shot clock was going down, and I was like, ‘Hey we’ve got to get it up.’ I was confident in shooting it. I felt it coming off my hand and was like, ‘Oh, this has got to be good.’”
Gafford got his 28 points and Isaiah Joe had 18, but it was Embery-Simpson’s shot that nailed down the game for a team that has struggled at times to hit those wide open shots.
“As soon as it left his hand, I knew it was going in,” Joe said after the game. “I had faith whoever took the shot it was going in. It just happened to be him, and I knew it was going in.”
It wasn’t over, even after Jones’ two free throws. Vanderbilt came flying down the court and Matt Ryan got what Commodores coach Bryce Drew called “a good look” at a 3-pointer, but it bounced off the rim, Jalen Harris snatched and took off the other way as the clock ran out.
“They trusted each other and that’s the growth right there,” Anderson said of Gafford’s kicking the ball out. “A lot of teams, the guy with the ball would have said, ‘I need to make the play,’ but Dan did a good job of getting through that double team because they had him sandwiched in there.”
Arkansas was on a four-game SEC winning streak while Vandy was looking for one win after nine straight losses. Both teams ralled from 10-point deficits.
Vanderbilt led 28-18 on Aaron Nesmith’s pull-up jump shot from the lane with under four minutes left in the first half before Joe went on a 3-point scoring binge.
Joe ended a three-minute stretch for the Razorbacks without a field goal with 2:57 left in the first half and drained four 3-pointers to pull the Hogs within one, 35-34, at halftime.
Gafford, who was making just 57 percent of his free throws coming into the game, kept Arkansas in the game early by hitting 8-of-9 from the free-throw line in the first half.
“I don’t want them to have the game plan of ‘hack a Dan,’” Gafford said. “I’ve just been working real hard on my free throws because as y’all can see I haven’t been hitting consecutive free throws down the stretch.”
For the game he hit 10-of-12 and the Hogs as a team were 75 percent, which was a drastic improvement.
The Razorbacks raced to a nine-point lead midway through the second half, then saw the lead evaporate as Vanderbilt’s Joe Toye hit three 3-pointers to help the Commodores go on a 12-2 run to retake the lead.
Vanderbilt’s last lead came with under a minute left when Toye, who had 18 points, hit his fourth 3-pointer of the second half for a 66-64 lead.
It doesn’t get any easier for this team and we’ll find out how much the’ve improved. They hit the road for a game Saturday at South Carolina. It’s the first of three out of four on the road.
But for now, they are on a roll.
We’ll see how long it goes.
