FAYETTEVILLE -- For the first time this basketball season the Arkansas Razorbacks don't return heroically to Walton Arena.
Win or lose, these undersized 16-8 overall, 4-7 in the SEC, Razorbacks always finished with Arkansas first-year, but veteran of many years and leagues, coach Eric Musselman asserting he's never coached a team playing any harder.
Until these last two games before today's clash at Walton against the Mississippi State Bulldogs.
Though an 83-79 overtime score indicates an evenly contested game that Arkansas lost last Saturday at Missouri, Musselman for the first time said an opponent played harder than his Hogs.
Nobody could dispute Arkansas' lack of team effort in last Tuesday's 82-61 loss at Tennessee.
"I thought Tennessee played with more energy and played harder and we didn't fight when things became difficult," Musselman said postgame in Knoxville. "Wish we would have played better, wish we would have played harder but we didn't. We've got a lot of work ahead of us for sure."
Though he played with sufficient effort to get to the free throw line 16 times and score 19 points against Tennessee, Arkansas senior graduate transfer guard Jimmy Whitt postgame didn't spare himself or his teammates.
"The fight wasn't there," Whitt said following Arkansas' first double digits loss. "The effort wasn't there. Just plain and simple."
Musselman still takes it hard, particularly the hard knocks in Knoxville.
"I didn't think we played well at Missouri at times but we're still right there where we could win the game even though we didn't play very well," Musselman said Thursday before the Hogs practiced in Fayetteville. "At Tennessee we did not play well at all."
But more than half in the 14-team SEC didn't play too well either last Saturday or their following midweek game, Musselman said.
"I just looked it up," Musselman said Thursday. "Eight of 14 SEC teams since Saturday, Feb. 8 have lost by double digits."
Call it February fatigue. Injuries mount. Bodies ache. Minds wander. Especially those weeks with two road games when the physical and mental grind often take their biggest toll. It happens even to the best.
"In the NBA out of the 82 games a lot of people thought that from seven to 10 games your team just wasn't going to have it," former NBA coach Musselman said. "In college I found great teams don't have it one out of 30 nights, Great teams. Teams that are pretty good usually have it two or three times. And then average teams have it four times."
Back on Jan. 22 in Starkville, Miss., Arkansas and Mississippi State battled fiercely at Humphrey Coliseum with the Bulldogs finally prevailing, 77-70.
With the SEC's best forward, Reggie Perry, and one of the SEC's best guards, Nick Weatherspoon, the 15-9 Bulldogs should be nobody's SEC slouch.
Yet the same Tuesday of Arkansas' Tennessee tumble, the hosting Ole Miss Rebels massacred Mississippi State, 83-58.
What happened Tuesday to each, each seeks to inflict on the other today.
Sports on 02/15/2020