Democrat-Gazette writer Tom Murphy says it’s going to be a weird bowl experience this year without the usual hoopla, plus former quarterback Nick Starkel having success with San Jose State.
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast – Heading down to Houston
Tye & Tommy on Arkansas’ bowl selection, the Championship games, CFB Playoff and more!
Hogs land Texas Bowl against familiar foe while CFP gets it right
In all the whining and moaning about how the College Football Playoff shouldn’t have let this team or that one in, don’t tell Sam Pittman the Hogs don’t belong in a bowl.
“If nothing else because of our schedule we’ve earned a bowl situation,” Pittman said after the official announcement of Arkansas going to the Texas Bowl to play TCU.
And, in case you’re wondering, the College Football Playoff folks got the four best teams in the playoff. It’s not about being fair or a minimum number of games played.
The Group of 5 schools are never going to be in a playoff and, in reality, are lucky to get into a New Year’s Six bowl game. Sorry, that’s a fact of life.
Ohio State is better than Texas A&M, who was up and down like kids that discovered an escalator. Jimbo Fisher was just trying to make a case for recruits and his fans.
The committee is not supposed to look at just numbers, but put the four best teams into the playoff at the end of the year and that’s exactly what they did.
Not that it matters. It will probably be Alabama and Clemson IV (one of those two teams has played in every championship game except the first one).
As for the Razorbacks, the game may mess up some partying, kicking off at 7 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, but it is a prime time game and a lot of folks will be watching.
“There might be a lot of people where the second half might be blurry to them,” Pittman said. “It’s the last game (of the 2020 calendar year), you’ll have a large audience … it’s gonna be kinda neat.”
Arkansas played a schedule that saw nearly every opponent on a 10-game schedule ranked at some point during the season. When it was announced during the summer, athletics director Hunter Yurachek called it the most difficult schedule in the history of college football.
Combine that with a weekly schedule of holding your breath waiting on covid-19 test results, an even bigger accomplishment was getting all 10 games played.
“I’m really proud of that,” Pittman said. “The only problem was we kinda limped into the end of the year. We had a few close games we couldn’t close out that early in the year we might have, but I don’t know.”
He’s right about limping into the last part of the schedule. Between players quitting for whatever reason and injuries, this time was ragged by the LSU game.
It showed on the field.
Now it’s on to face a TCU team that is looking forward to getting in additional practices with the bowl game. Both Pittman and Horned Frogs coach Gary Patterson sounded Sunday evening like that was the main reason they wanted the game.
Pittman says Hogs earned spot in Texas Bowl just by strength of schedule
After a brutal regular season where nearly every opponent was ranked in the Top 25 at some point, Sam Pittman thinks Hogs earned bowl game.
Patterson ‘excited’ to face Hogs in Texas Bowl; Carter like member of family
TCU coach Gary Patterson about being excited about Texas Bowl, Hogs cornerbacks coach Sam Carter like a member of his family.
Opt-outs just a convenient excuse for financial decisions these days
In sports, the buzz word for 2020 is something called “opt-out,” which has become an excuse for administrators and bowl games more concerned over money than health.
With Arkansas getting to a bowl game that is actually deserved, despite getting just three wins this year, that is a pretty good picture of how bizarre this season has become.
Schools have used the covid-19 situation as an excuse to not play games or, now, not play in bowl games simply because since it’s not a top-tier game they really don’t make enough money to go play the game.
They can say otherwise but if they do they are lying.
If there was a serious health risk to college athletes, nobody would have played. The Big Ten and Pac 12 tried to go that route until they saw players in the conferences playing games weren’t dying or being hospitalized.
At least 20 teams have opted out of postseason play, including prominent programs such as Stanford, Florida State, Penn State, USC and UCLA. LSU also chose to not play a bowl game, but that is trying to curry favor with the NCAA on an investigation that is ongoing more than anything else.
The simple reason they aren’t playing in a bowl game is they don’t want to spend the money at a time when revenues are coming up seriously short. Bowl games don’t pay a school enough money to make a profit in good times, much less these days.
Bowl games cost most schools more money than they generate because the schools spend money like sailors on a battleship coming into port after a year-long deployment.
Don’t Google the payouts and think that’s paid to the schools because it goes to the conferences, who give a little bit to the schools to cover expenses, then it’s divided among the member schools.
Money is also the real reason some bowl games are taking advantage of the convenient excuse of covid-19 to cancel their games for this year.
That’s the exact reason the Independence Bowl in Shreveport used to keep a 9-2 Army team out of a bowl game.
Army had a primary agreement to play in the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl, but the game was canceled on Sunday after the bowl said in a statement that “the opting out of possible teams created a lack of teams available to play in bowl games.”
At least they were halfway truthful. They should have just said they couldn’t get a big enough name team to come play against Army in Shreveport.
The bowls are using the excuse not big enough name teams are available and they aren’t available because they don’t want to spend the money … and then saying they are doing it for health safety reasons despite the fact it’s the easiest game to create a team bubble and nobody has enough people in the stands to worry about this year.
As usual, follow the money (or lack of) and you usually get the answer in college athletics.
Hogs trail at halftime, but bounce back to get by Oral Roberts
For the first time this season, Arkansas trailed at halftime but out-scored Oral Roberts in the second half for an 87-76 victory Sunday afternoon at Bud Walton Arena.
Justin Smith and Desi Sills each posted double-doubles in the win and each had career highs in rebounds.
Smith led all players with 22 points – two shy of his career high – and pulled down a game-high 17 rebounds. Smith hauled in 10 offensive rebounds as the Razorbacks had 24 offensive boards and out-rebounded the Golden Eagles, 58-32, overall.
Smith posted his fifth career double-double — first as a Razorback — and his 17 boards is the most by a Razorback since Mike Washington had 18 versus Florida in the 2009 SEC Tournament.
Sills, a preseason All-SEC pick, grabbed a career-high 10 rebounds with 16 points for his first career double-double.
Arkansas scored the first six points of the game to force a quick ORU timeout. The Golden Eagles responded with a 12-4 run to lead 12-10. ORU’s Kevin Obanor hit a jumper at 10:18 gave ORU a 14-13 lead and the Eagles maintained the advantage until midway through the second half.
Obanor scored to open the second half to ORU to tie its largest lead of 12 (42-30). From that point, Arkansas went on a 19-6 run – including a 10-0 spurt – to take a 49-48 lead with 12:49 left.
However, ORU responded with a 7-2 run to grab a four-point cushion (55-51) with 11:34 to go. An 8-0 run by the Hogs was answered with a 7-3 run by ORU ad the game was tied 62-62 with 8:23 remaining.
Arkansas raced out to a six-point lead and out-scored the Golden Eagles 19-6 over the next 4:33 to lead by nine. ORU go to within six with 1:24 left before Arkansas scored the final five points of the game for the 11-point win.
Moses Moody added 18 points and seven rebounds while JD Notae had 15 points and a career-high three blocked shots with three assists.
Obanor also had a double-double in the game with 21 points and 10 rebounds. RJ Glasper added 14 points, Kareem Thompson 13 and Max Abmas 11.
Arkansas returns to Nolan Richardson Court on Tuesday (Dec. 22) versus Abilene Christian.
Tipoff is set for 4 p.m. and the game will be telecast on SEC Network.
FIRST HALF: Arkansas 30, Oral Roberts 40
• Arkansas scored the first six points of the game, but Oral Roberts controlled the first half.
• The Razorbacks trailed for the first time this year at halftime.
• Arkansas missed its first 11 3-point attempts and was just 2-of-16 from deep for the half. Connor Vanover made the Razorbacks’ first triple at 7:16.
• Arkansas dominated on the board, holding a 32-19 advantage with 15 offensive boards. Justin Smith had eight boards and Desi Sills seven.
• Smith led the Hogs with nine first half points.
• Kevin Obanor led ORU with 12 points. The Golden Eagles shot 40% from the field.
SECOND HALF: Arkansas 57, Oral Roberts 36
• ORU scored the first in the second half before Arkansas went on a 17-6 run, including an 10-0 spurt. Notae hit a fast-break layup to cap the run at 12:49 to give Arkansas its first lead, 49-48, since early in the first half.
• ORU briefly regained the lead, 55-51, but an 8-0 put the Razorbacks back on top for good. With 10:00 to go.
• Arkansas shot 54.1% from the field in the second half while holding ORU to 39.3%.
• Arkansas committed nine first-half turnovers with just six in the second. Defensively, ORU only had three first-half turnovers but Arkansas forced 10 in the second.
• Arkansas was much more aggressive in the second half. The Hogs were just 4-of-7 from the free throw line in the first half but were 15-of-20 in the second half.
Game notes
• Arkansas won for the first time when trailing by double-digits at halftime since the Razorbacks trailed UT Arlington by 11 on Nov. 18, 2016, and won by four.
• Arkansas’ starting lineup was Jalen Tate (G) – Desi Sills (G) – Moses Moody (G) – Justin Smith (F) – Connor Vanover (F) for the sixth straight game.
• For the first time this year, Arkansas did control the tip.
• Moses Moody scored the game’s first points, a jumper in the lane at 18:48.
• JD Notae was the first sub for Arkansas.
• Arkansas’ 58 rebounds tied for the most this year and the most by Arkansas under head coach Eric Musselman.
• Arkansas’ 24 offensive rebounds are the most this season, the most by Arkansas under Musselman and the second-most by a Musselman-coached college team.
• ORU entered the game third in the NCAA in 3-pointers made (12.7) but were held to just eight.
• Arkansas held ORU to 28.6% from 3-point range. Arkansas, who led the NCAA in 3-point FG% last season, has held an opponent to below 29% from long range in 23 of Musselman’s 39 games as Arkansas head coach.
• Justin Smith is the first Razorback with at least 22 points and 17 rebounds since Nick Davis had 22 points and 23 boards on Nov. 21, 1997 versus Jackson State.
• Justin Smith only needs 83 points for 1,000 and 31 rebounds for 500.
• Justin Smith’s previous rebound high was 12 on two occasions. His nine FG and 20 FG attempts as both career highs.
• Desi Sills’ previous rebound high was seven.
• Moses Moody is the only Razorback to score double-digits in all seven games.
• Moses Moody had posted at least 15 points and seven rebounds in four of the last five games.
• Eric Musselman is the only Razorback coach to start 7-0 in each of his first two years. Eugene Lambert was 10-0 in his first year (1942-43) and 5-0 in year two (1943-44).
• Arkansas is 7-0 to start for the second straight year. Arkansas started 8-0 last year. The last time Arkansas started at least 7-0 in back-to-back years was 1992-93 (8-0) and 1993-94 (10-0).
• Arkansas scored at least 50 in a half for the fourth time (twice versus Mississippi Valley and once versus UCA).
Information from Arkansas Communications is included in this story.
Musselman after Hogs rebound from sluggish first half to down ORU
Arkansas coach Eric Musselman was not happy after a first half that saw the Hogs trailing Oral Roberts, but did like the turnaround for 87-76 win.
Smith on getting whopping double-double in Hogs’ 87-76 win over ORU
Arkansas’ Justin Smith (22 points, 17 rebounds) appreciated Eric Musselman putting him among best rebounders he’s ever coached.
Sills after getting first double-double in Hogs’ 87-76 win over Oral Roberts
Razorbacks’ Desi Sills (16 points, 10 rebounds) talked with the media after recording his first double-double in the comeback win over the Eagles.
Hogs’ 3-point shooting gets most points on a Foley-coached team in win
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas pushed its win streak to five on Saturday afternoon, downing in-state foe Little Rock, 80-70.
The Razorbacks relied on the long ball against the Trojans, hitting 14 three’s in the game, the most ever given up in a single game by a Joe Foley-coached team.
Redshirt senior guard Chelsea Dungee led the Razorbacks on the scoreboard, as she dropped 18 points on six of 11 shooting, including five made threes, matching her career-high.
Redshirt senior guard Destiny Slocum scored 16 points, while Makayla Daniels and Amber Ramirez also both scored in double figures, going for 11 and 10 points, respectively.
Turning point
The Razorbacks came out firing in the first quarter, opening a 26-12 lead behind nine quick points from Daniels.
The second quarter belonged to the Trojans, though, as Little Rock cut the lead all the way down to four midway through the frame.
Arkansas re-established itself in the second half, but Little Rock refused to go away, as the Trojans cut it back down to eight down the stretch on a Bre’amber Scott three pointer with 40 seconds to play.
The Razorbacks leaned on their senior stars in the clutch though, as Dungee and Slocum combined for 14 points in the fourth period, while only missing one shot between them.
Hogs highlights
• Arkansas’ bench played a key role in the win, as redshirt senior guard Jailyn Mason (nine points), redshirt sophomore forward Erynn Barnum (eight points) and sophomore guard Marquesha Davis (seven points) all made key contributions off the pine.
• Barnum also led the Hogs down low during her homecoming, pulling down six rebounds and rejecting two shots.
• With her 18 points, Dungee has now scored in double figures in 13 straight games.
• Slocum continues to rack up the assists for the Razorbacks, as she added four more against Little Rock.
Next time out
Arkansas finishes off its non-conference schedule on Monday afternoon, as UAPB comes to Bud Walton Arena.
That game will tip at 1 p.m.
Information from Arkansas Communications is included in this story.
