Arkansas to take on Louisville in Hawaii

Basketball / Getty Images
Basketball / Getty Images

FAYETTEVILLE -- Two years after the University of Arkansas basketball team and Louisville were set to play in the same tournament in Las Vegas the Razorbacks and Cardinals will face each other 2,700 miles farther west in Hawaii.

Arkansas will open play against Louisville at the 2022 Maui Invitational on Nov. 21 in the Lahaina Civic Center.

Tipoff will be 4 p.m. Central with the game televised on ESPN2. All of the games in Maui will be on ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU.

The Razorbacks and Cardinals, along with Colorado State and San Francisco, had been scheduled to play in the MGM Resorts Main Event on Nov. 20-22, 2020, in Las Vegas before the tournament was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Maui Invitational bracket was announced Monday, and Arkansas will play its second game against either Creighton or Texas Tech on Nov. 22.

Arizona, Cincinnati, Ohio State and San Diego State are in the opposite bracket, so the Razorbacks will play one of those teams on Nov. 23 -- the day before Thanksgiving.

Along with the Maui Invitational, Arkansas' other marquee non-conference games are against Oklahoma in Tulsa on Dec. 10 and at Baylor on Jan. 28 in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge.

The Razorbacks, who leave Saturday for a foreign tour in Spain and Italy that will include four exhibition games, have a team with 11 newcomers, including six freshmen and five transfers.

Three of the freshmen --Nick Smith, Jordan Walsh and Anthony Black -- are McDonald's High School All-Americans, and the Razorbacks are projected to be nationally ranked in the top 10 in most preseason polls.

"This is the most challenging schedule that we've ever had since I've been here," Arkansas Coach Eric Musselman, who is 73-28 in three seasons at Arkansas with back-to-back NCAA Tournament Elite Eight appearances, said last week. "The Hawaii games, they're going to be really, really challenging.

"We saw what Oklahoma did to us in Tulsa."

Oklahoma beat Arkansas 88-66 last season, and Musselman was ejected late in the game after drawing two technical fouls.

"I mean, they kicked our butt," Musselman said. "You think about going to Baylor."

The Bears are 81-13 the previous three seasons and won the 2021 national championship when they beat the Razorbacks 81-72 in an Elite Eight matchup.

"We're going to be really challenged and I think the thing I can't answer right now is what happens when adversity hits?" Musselman said. "Because it's going to hit. Do freshmen run into a freshman wall?

"Those are all things that I can't predict. They're things that we can talk about.

"They're things that we'll try to address before they happen -- 'Hey, if we go on a two-game losing streak, here's how we are going to overcome that' -- and I think you always want to try to lay out all the hurdles your team can run into prior to them happening."

Arkansas is 3-4 against Louisville, a program the Razorbacks haven't played since the 2008-09 season when the Cardinals won 99-66 in St. Louis. That was in John Pelphrey's second season as Arkansas' coach when he faced Rick Pitino, who had been his coach at Kentucky.

Louisville has a new coach this season in Kenny Payne, who as a Kentucky assistant coached the Wildcats to a 73-66 victory at Arkansas in 2020 after Coach John Calipari was ejected.

Payne, a player on Louisville's 1986 national championship team, was an NBA assistant with the New York Knicks the previous two seasons.

The top returning scorers from last season's Louisville team that struggled to a 13-19 record are 6-3 senior guard El Ellis, who averaged 8.7 points, and 6-8 senior forward Sydney Curry, who averaged 7.1, but 17.6 over the final five games.

Among Louisville's newcomers is 6-10 sophomore Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, a transfer from Tennessee.

Arkansas is 40-40 against Texas Tech, a former Southwest Conference rival the Razorbacks most recently played in the 2021 NCAA Tournament when they beat the Red Raiders 68-66 in a second-round game.

The Razorbacks are 1-1 against Creighton and haven't played the Bluejays since the 1962-63 season when Arkansas won 73-61 in Oklahoma City. Creighton won the teams' first meeting, 29-28, on Dec. 17, 1932, in at home in Omaha, Neb.

Arkansas is playing in the Maui Invitational for the fourth time with other appearances in 1991, 2005 and 2013. The Razorbacks were 2-1 in 1991 when they beat Minnesota and Chaminade and lost to Michigan State in the championship game; 1-2 in 2005 when they lost to Connecticut, beat Kansas and lost to Maryland; and 1-2 in 2013 when they lost to California, beat Minnesota and lost to Gonzaga.

The Maui Invitational is back in Hawaii this season after being played in Asheville, N.C., two years ago and Las Vegas last year because of coronavirus safety precautions.


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