Arkansas coach Mike Anderson said after an 87-72 loss to Kentucky on Tuesday night he expects the team to bounce back.
Calipari says Hogs should be ‘sixth or seventh seed’
Kentucky coach John Calipari said Arkansas should get a good seed in the NCAA Tournament despite the 15-point loss to the Wildcats.
Beard, Macon on Hogs’ rebounding from loss to ’Cats
Arkansas’s Anton Beard and Daryl Macon expect players to put loss to Kentucky behind them after midnight Tuesday.
Hogs go cold in second half, fall to Kentucky, 87-72
FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas could not hold on to its early lead Tuesday night, as the the Razorbacks fell to the Kentucky Wildcats, 87-72, in Bud Walton Arena.
The Razorbacks came out swinging.
Arkansas used an 11-0 run right out of the gate to go up early on the Wildcats. The Razorbacks hit their first two 3-point attempts to take a 6-0 lead, before needing a little help on the offensive glass from senior forward Dustin Thomas.
Thomas tied his career high in offensive boards just in the first three minutes of the game with four, as the Razorbacks would score five early second chance points off of his rebounds.
Kentucky clawed back in it to eventually take the lead, but Arkansas tied it at half, 43-43, thanks for senior guard Daryl Macon, who hit a last second three.
Macon led the Razorbacks at the break with 14 points, going 4-of-7 from deep.
With 13 minutes and 16 seconds left in the game, Arkansas led 61-56 after a pull-up 3 in transition by Anton Beard.
The Wildcats would go on a 25-5 run over the next eight-plus minutes to take their largest lead of the night at 81-66. A big reason for that run was Arkansas’ inability to create anything on the offensive end.
The Razorbacks went seven minutes and 43 seconds without a basket. Arkansas missed 10 of its last 12 shots of the game, including a streak of seven straight.
Kentucky went on to win 87-72, as the Razorbacks fall to 19-9 overall this season, 8-7 in SEC play.
Macon led Arkansas with 26 points on 8-of-16 shooting, hitting 4-of-9 from behind the arc.
Senior forward Dustin Thomas led Arkansas in rebounding, pulling down 10 boards, including a career-high six on the offensive end, to go along with six points.
Beard scored 13 for Arkansas and had a team-high five assists.
Arkansas returns to action on Saturday, as the Razorbacks travel to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a 5 p.m. tip off against the Alabama Crimson Tide on SEC Network.
Kentucky’s players talk about big win over Razorbacks
Kentucky players P.J. Washington, Kevin Knox and Jarred Vanderbilt talk with the media after the Wildcats’ 87-72 win over Arkansas on Tuesday night.
Hogs’ Igbokwe garners third SEC honor for third time
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Seemingly sprinting through his third indoor campaign as a Razorback, junior Obi Igbokwe has been selected as the SEC Runner of the Week for the third time this season by the league office.
Already ranked third in the nation in the 400-meter dash, Igbokwe focused on his turnover and speed work this past weekend at the Arkansas Qualifier and was rewarded with an indoor personal best in the 200 of 20.69.
His performance is the second-fastest in the SEC so far this year and ranks him at No. 7 on the NCAA leader boards. Igbokwe also moved up to No. 6 on Arkansas’ all-time bests list.
Arkansas will return to action next weekend in College Station, Texas, on a mission to defend its league title at the 2018 Southeastern Conference Indoor Championships. The Razorbacks are the winningest indoor program in the conference, having captured 22 titles since 1992.
Brown recognized as SEC’s top freshman for 60-meters effort
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Arkansas newcomer Janeek Brown has been named the SEC Freshman of the Week, following her outstanding performance in the 60-meter hurdles at the Razorbacks’ regular season finale last weekend in Fayetteville at the Randal Tyson Track Center.
The fastest qualifier out of the 60 hurdle prelims, off a time of 8.20, Brown raced to a personal best of 8.15 in the finals to win the event.
The Kingston, Jamaica, native currently ranks 14th in the NCAA and is the second-fastest freshman in the country in the 60 hurdles.
Brown’s performance also checks in at No. 4 on Arkansas’ all-time bests list.
With the indoor regular season behind them the Razorbacks will shift their focus to postseason competition, looking to pick up the program’s 12th-consecutive Southeastern Conference title next weekend in College Station, Texas, at the 2018 SEC Indoor Championships.
Bud Walton’s crowd could be Hogs’ biggest advantage
Mike Anderson knows how big this stretch of four games to finish the season is.
“The games just keep getting bigger,” he said Monday at his pre-Kentucky press conference.
Kentucky’s coming to Bud Walton on Tuesday night — not ranked, which is always strange to even type — but Anderson knows it’s always a big game.
Whenever the Razorbacks and Wildcats meet, well, it’s a game that energizes the fans and usually the players. The guess here is Mike also gets a little pumped over it.
“It should be a great atmosphere,” he said. “I love this time of the year. This is a time when all of the things start coming together.”
The Hogs are riding a four-game winning streak, including knocking off Texas A&M on Saturday night by 19 points.
“These guys are starting to have fun,” Anderson said. “We’ve been playing really efficient basketball. We had 17 assists and shot nearly 50 percent against A&M.”
But it IS Kentucky, a team Arkansas has struggled with in recent years.
“This is the next game on our schedule,” Anderson said, trying to downplay it like most coaches do. “It’s whoever happens to be on the schedule at this point in time. We played them at their place and in the tournament last year and they beat us. That’s the bottom line.”
The Razorbacks come into the game as the hottest 3-point team in the SEC. The Wildcats are the best in the league defending that.
“Something has to give,” Anderson said with a smile.
This is usually the time when Anderson’s teams seem to get on a roll. They’ll drop a game here or there along the way, which happens these days in college basketball, especially in a year when the SEC is good, but is very balanced.
In reality, the Hogs are probably already locked into the NCAA Tournament, regardless of what they do the rest of the way.
It’s a battle for seeding right now and a couple of wins through the rest of the schedule (including the SEC Tournament) could get them as high as a No. 9, according to most of the guys who project such things.
As usual, Kentucky is a team dominated by freshmen, but it’s one of these John Calipari situations where things haven’t meshed well and that’s when they tend to struggle at times, like this year.
The Hogs have a decided edge in experience.
And, of course, Anderson totally dismissed that as being an advantage at this time of the year.
“This day in time, it doesn’t matter what class your players are,” he said. “Freshmen these days are very, very talented. Hopefully some of our experience will help out our younger guys.”
“I don’t know that when the ball is thrown up anyone says this freshman or that senior is doing this or does that,” Kentucky assistant Joel Justus said Monday in Lexington.
At this point in the year, you can throw that one out.
The main thing in Arkansas’ favor, however, can’t be thrown out. That’s the crowd at Bud Walton on what is predicted to be a rainy evening, although the temperature will be in the mid to high 50’s, according to the weather dogs at the local TV stations.
This team seems to feed off the crowd, especially on defense.
And the guess here is that won’t be a problem.
Anderson on Kentucky game, team playing well
Arkansas coach Mike Anderson met with the media Monday and talked about the Kentucky game and how the team is playing well on this winning streak.
