FAYETTEVILLE -- University of Arkansas football fans could be forgiven if they were envisioning another nightmare outcome against a Conference USA opponent early in the third quarter of the season opener against Rice on Saturday.
The Owls were the third consecutive opponent from Conference USA to lead Arkansas at halftime at Reynolds Razorback Stadium -- along with North Texas in 2018 and Western Kentucky in 2019 -- and they stretched their lead to 10 points when Wiley Green hit August Pitre III with a 41-yard pass pass with 10:28 left in the third quarter.
But instead of losing, as Arkansas did to North Texas 44-17 and Western Kentucky 45-19, the Razorbacks took control.
Arkansas scored the final 31 points and beat Rice 38-17 to overcome a 17-7 deficit.
It was the first non-conference game for second-year Arkansas Coach Sam Pittman after SEC teams played an all-conference, 10-game schedule last season due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Razorbacks were 3-7 last season, a promising start for Pittman considering Arkansas was 1-23 in SEC games from 2017-19, but Saturday's first half drew boos from some fans.
"There was a lot of bad stuff out there that looks like as a head coach this wasn't a very well-coached football team," Pittman said. "That's me. That is nobody else. That's me.
"We'll get better, but I was so proud we came back in the second half."
The lopsided losses to North Texas and Western Kentucky occurred when Chad Morris was the Razorbacks' coach.
The Western Kentucky debacle turned out to be Morris' last game. He was fired the next day and finished with a 4-18 record with the Razorbacks.
"It's both the leadership on a player level and a coach level," Arkansas offensive tackle Dalton Wagner, a fifth-year senior, said when asked the difference in Saturday's outcome and what happened in the previous two Conference USA games. "Coach Pittman came in at halftime and challenged us."
Rice, a 19 1/2-point underdog, led 10-7 at halftime.
"We knew we were playing very badly and needed to make sure we cleaned up our mistakes," Wagner said. "Coming out in the second half, I think you look at it two years ago, guys would have rolled over.
"But Coach Pittman, playing for him, playing for the seniors that came back, playing for everybody on this team, the fans, the state of Arkansas, guys have bought in. No one wanted to roll over. Guys wanted to go on that 31-0 run."
Safety Jalen Catalon, a redshirt sophomore, had two interceptions in the fourth quarter that set-up touchdowns.
"Coach Pittman told us he was hoping we had some adversity with this game because the adversity was going to determine how good this team was going to be," Catalon said. "I think we handled it really well.
"Yeah, down 17-7, you could start pointing fingers, a lot of teams [would], especially that late in the game, but no one panicked.
"We all stuck together. Then we pulled through and started making big plays and before you know it, we changed the game around."
Pittman said the focus at halftime was making adjustments to play better in the second half.
"The one thing I learned a long time ago is you have to figure out what is really the problem, and how big is the climb," Pittman said. "We as coaches ... you're down three to a team you're supposed to beat, and you can bury [your players with criticism].
"We talked a lot about adjustments from our coaching staff. You've got to look in a mirror about things going wrong. You can't just go, 'Oh, he dropped a pass, he did this, he did that.'
"We talked about running the ball up the gut. We were trying to get the ball outside too much. They have more speed, not size, and we were running the ball outside too much.
"So we wanted to adjust that and run the ball right at them, get KJ [Jefferson] involved in the run game. That's what we did."
The Razorbacks rushed for 116 yards on 17 attempts in the second half and finished with 245 yards on 45 attempts.
Trelon Smith led Arkansas with 22 carries for 102 yards, Jefferson 9 for 89, Raheim "Rocket" Sanders 7 for 44 and Dominique Johnson 4 for 16.
"Our defense had the one bad play and left the guy uncovered on the post route," Pittman said. "But other than that, I thought they played really well. We have to get better on defense too now."
Pittman clearly wasn't happy with how the Razorbacks played, but he also wasn't going to dwell on the first half.
"We finished the game," he said. "You can't play an entire game and only talk about the first half. You know what I'm saying?
"We did win, 38-17. There are some good things to build off, too, and we'll do both of those."
Arkansas plays No. 21 Texas on Saturday in Reynolds Razorback Stadium. The Longhorns likely will go up in The Associated Press poll after beating No. 23 Louisiana-Lafayette 38-18.
"We're going to have to put a full game together against Texas," Pittman said. "This may help us. This may wake us up a little bit more than we were. Both us and the kids."