Arkansas has soul-searching to do, but it’s not time to panic

KNOXVILLE –- John Calipari and his team got a punch in the face on Saturday.

Calipari hopes his first Arkansas team will be playing their best basketball deep into SEC play like most of his teams, which have had 14 winning records in 15 seasons in the SEC, have throughout his career. That basketball seemed like an afterthought on Saturday as the Razorbacks’ six-game winning streak came to an end, though.

The 32nd-year head coach was reminded in Saturday’s 76-52 loss to No. 1 Tennessee that he’s still got plenty of work to do for his group of 13 newcomers to reach that point, though.

“We’ve got to do some soul-searching,” Calipari said. “We got work to do. We know we’re not as good as the No. 1 team in the country. In this league, every game you play is going to be a hard game.”

Saturday’s loss forced Calipari’s group to learn that the hard way as it went into a sold-out Thompson-Boling Arena and trailed by double digits from the 5:03 mark of the first half on, went down by 27 at one point and shot just 37.7% from the field.

Calipari’s team didn’t just learn that its league would be tough in that game, though. It learned that to have success against a schedule that has eight more ranked teams left on it, it won’t be able to live solely off the talent of its No. 1 ranked transfer class.

Rick Barnes’ Tennessee team was tougher and stronger than Calipari’s team and looked decidedly like more of a unit than Calipari’s group, which is working to mesh together seven transfers and six freshmen. Even a quick look at the box score indicates that.

Arkansas recorded just nine assists relative to its 15 turnovers, which can likely be easily attributed to its two primary ballhandlers being underclassmen and facing the nation’s No. 1 team in KenPom’s defensive efficiency rating. It appears it can rely on freshman guard Boogie Fland and his 3.27 assist-to-turnover ratio as well as sophomore guard DJ Wagner’s 1.47 ratio to propel it to better results and movement. Some of that will also inevitably come with time and integrating Florida Atlantic transfer Johnell Davis, who has missed time with a wrist injury and returned on Saturday, back into things.

The old adage that everything looks better when shots are falling is applicable here, too.

“Two things,” Calipari said when explaining the reasons for his team’s season-low scoring output of 52 points. “[First thing is] we missed all kind of free throws. Second thing is, we had a bunch of good threes, good looks, and you miss them. Look, I say this all the time, you don’t have to make them all. Can’t miss them. You can’t miss them all. We missed every one that gave us a chance to get back. I mean, and some of them badly.”

Calipari’s team is top 100 in the country in 3-point percentage, which indicates that it may not be time to hit the panic button on that aspect of its profile at this point. The 16th-year SEC head coach noticed something off-putting every time the ball clanked off the rim, though.

“We only had one guy go to try to offensive rebound,” Calipari said. “We do something good, they get an offensive rebound. We make it 13, they get two offensive rebounds, two 3s and we look around like ‘guys [the score] has nothing to do with anything but rebounds.’”

Tennessee took it to Arkansas on the glass and outrebounded it 51-29. Arkansas also allowed Barnes’ team to score 16 second-chance points off of 24 offensive rebounds.

Even with the lack of physicality, Calipari believes there’s reason to believe in a turnaround. He’s got a team that ranks 44th in Division-I minutes experience, he’s got depth and he’s got a group that appears to be among the SEC’s most talented. As a result, he’s clinging to optimism throughout the individual meetings with his players and staff in the early portion of the week.

“I’m not cracking,” Calipari said. “I’ve been through a lot of this.”

If Calipari’s past–and his group’s talent level– is any indicator he’s got odds in his favor of rarely ending up in situations like he was on Saturday in Knoxville. It would be uncharacteristic of everything that a season under Calipari stands for.

It would also be uncharacteristic of his roster, which has legitimate depth, good guard play, and a better defensive profile than most of his teams. It could take time for it to unlock its best basketball–particularly offensively–but it has a chance.

Arkansas stepped back in Knoxville, but it didn’t become a non-threat in the SEC.

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