Let me say this. I was deeply concerned about this game headed into it; What a trap game. We have Kentucky coming up on Tuesday, having just won two games on the road; Arkansas is supposed to be a pretty bad team, but they just go Courtney Fortson back and have been a completely different team of late. This Arkansas team lost to Texas by ten, beat State by five, and was crushed at Kentucky by only 31 points (I'm starting to believe that's a positive).
That being said, we should have won this game. It's the first loss this season that made me die a little bit inside. Arkansas traveled to the Tad Pad, a venue that some would have you believe is menacing to opponents. We were just beginning to play a like a team that wanted to hold onto its ranking. Then we blew it.
Anyway, in case you didn't read the caption to the photo, Murphy Holloway was the best Rebel on the court by a mile. He scored 19 points and pulled down 17 rebounds, eight of which were offensive. Three cheers for Murphy. On the other hand, the only thing that Terrance Henry and DeAundre Cranston did of note is collect nine fouls between them and play for 30 minutes total. Way to step it up when Reginald Buckner is out with a sprained ankle.
Because of Cranston and Henry's foul trouble, Arkansas' bigs were able to abuse our defense. Among the two major big players for Arkansas, Michael Washington and Marshawn Powell had 41 points and 17 rebounds. Yeah. It sucked.
Eniel and Chris Warren both played quite well, but Terrico White was invisible offensively again. He went 3-14. That's horrible. Also, White had a chance to tie the game late, but he missed the front end of a one-and-one. I know that he's a pretty good free throw shooter normally, but in that situation, he had to make those free throws, and he didn't. It was just disappointing.
Since i couldn't watch the game, I can only see that statistically Zach Graham performed moderately well, however I do remember hearing on the radio that he picked up two quick, stupid fouls. That's not normal for Graham, so I'll cut him some slack.
That's basically it. It was really ugly. We led for roughly 34 minutes, but when the time came to put the game away, we just couldn't do it.