Hogs get win over Portland State, but obviously not big enough

A little over an hour after Arkansas finally subdued pesky Portland State, a fan wandered down Razorback Road outside the stadium screaming obscenities to the skies.

He was alone and completely exasperated with a 20-13 win that had some folks squirming in their seats. Alcohol may or may not have been a contributing factor for this fan, but may have helped.

That fan may have been alone on his walk, but there are many that share the sentiment.

It took a late interception by defensive back Joe Foucha with 11 seconds left to finally decide things. Even that wasn’t handled the way Chad Morris wanted it.

“I was about to tackle him,” Morris said later.

Foucha returned the interception 20 yards, but Morris wanted him on the ground. By that point, he was just wanting a win and to get out of there.

“We work that, but I guess we don’t work it enough,” he said, shaking his head. “He knows.”

Correcting mistakes after a win is an easier task than following a loss.

And Morris wasn’t apologizing.

“Never will I ever apologize for winning,” he said. “There is no such thing as a bad win. You win and you correct. Now, you may not have played as well as you wanted to play — and we didn’t — but we won and we’re going to be able to use this win to make corrections.”

Look around the SEC on Saturday. The best conference in college football looked like just an average league.

Think Missouri, Tennessee or Ole Miss wouldn’t trade places with the Razorbacks’ result on Saturday?

They lost, in order, to Wyoming, Georgia State and Memphis. South Carolina also lost to North Carolina as Mack Brown debuts with the Tar Heels getting a win.

Yeah, let that sink in for a few minutes.

In hindsight, expecting the offensive execution to be in midseason form starting off with 11 different starters than last year’s opener was probably not realistic.

But it was exasperating … even to Morris, who admitted the offense didn’t play well. The numbers (395 yards of offense, 204 of that on the ground).

Ben Hicks started and had sparks where you saw why he won the starting job, but there were some missed reads, especially taking deep shots. Fans want to blame play-calling, but it was missed reads.

Morris took the blame, but said it will be fixed.

Blown chances in the red zone is what drove fans crazy and they missed three chances at touchdowns, including one after an interception by Kamren Curl that set them up at the Portland State 18 with 2:46 left in the first half.

In trotted Nick Starkel at quarterback and three plays later he threw an interception across the middle, completely missing an open receiver.

“It was really frustrating,” Morris said. “It was disappointing we couldn’t come away with some type of points.”

The defense got the ball back, though, with 49 seconds left. Starkel came in again, found Trey Knox for a 38-yard completion, hit a couple of additional passes, including one to Rakeem Boyd, who scooted out of bounds as the clock ran out.

“We thought we managed our time outs as well as we could have to get the ball back and we got down the field and then there was a miscommunication,” Morris said. “That was completely on me.”

Morris won’t be dwelling on those mistakes, though. He will work to get them fixed, but the bottom line to this win was a defense that showed a ton of improvement.

The Hogs gave up one touchdown when the Vikings simply made a play late, but held Portland State to 75 yards rushing (most of it scrambles by the quarterback) and 230 total.

And they got three turnovers, which is what defensive coordinator John Chavis wants every game. Last year the Hogs got five interceptions in 12 games. They picked off three in this one.

Oh, and they had six sacks and just missed twice that many.

“Just relentless effort, getting to the ball, full tilt,” said defensive tackle McTelvin Agim, who had a couple of the sacks. “That was what I was trying to do. Sometimes you are going to miss tackles. You can’t rely on your teammates to just make tackles all the time. Sometimes you just got to make sure he’s down, so that’s basically what we were doing.”

It’s the offense, though, that had fans jumping up and down.

“We moved the ball well, we just didn’t punch it in the end zone enough,” Hicks said later.

Hicks is the starter and will be against the Rebels, who will likely be reeling after losing to Memphis on Saturday and it probably won’t be a week of fun in Oxford.

“We just have to score points, especially when our defense gets turnovers like that,” he said. “You have to make teams pay for turning the ball over.”

He didn’t turn the ball over a single time. Starkel had that interception, which was the only turnover for the Hogs on the day.

There won’t be a quarterback issue this week.

“Ben is going to start next week,” Morris said.

Yeah, there’s going to be complaining and moaning about this team and the armchair experts and media folks will predict doom and gloom for the year.

But, as Morris said, they are 1-0.

And there are a few SEC teams that would like to be there that, well, aren’t.