FAYETTEVILLE — It wasn’t easy being Casey Dick last week, not after throwing two costly interceptions in a loss to Kentucky that dropped Arkansas to 0-2 in SEC play.

There weren’t a lot of smiles shared between Coach Houston Nutt and offensive coordinator David Lee, either, after another pitiful performance out of the Razorbacks’ passing game.

“It hasn’t been fun living in the state of Arkansas this week for any of us, OK ?” Lee said after Saturday night’s 66-7 victory over North Texas, which at least temporarily allowed for some grins.

“It feels like a ton of bricks has been lifted off your shoulders,” said Dick, who completed 12 of 21 passes for 210 yards and 3 touchdowns before being lifted with 4: 28 to go in the third quarter.

ADVERTISEMENT

Dick’s 210 yards were the second-highest total of his career — trailing only the 228 he piled up after relieving Mitch Mustain after the first series in last season’s 26-20 victory at South Carolina — and included a career-best 61-yard touchdown hookup with split end London Crawford.

“Tonight we had everybody clicking, and we went out there and did what we know we can do — win,” Crawford said. “It feels great to be out there with your teammates smiling and everybody laughing and having fun.”

Arkansas was able to smile because Lee’s plan to use some short, high-percentage passing plays as confidence-boosters meshed perfectly with a North Texas defense that played soft coverages early.

“They were giving that stuff to us, and if they’re going to give it, we’re going to take it,” Dick said. “We’ll turn a 5-yard out into a 15-yard gain and a first down.”

Arkansas did that repeatedly, with Dick making 16 throws of 10 yards or less. He connected on nine of those passes for an average of 11. 2 yards per completion.

Dick threw only one pass between 10 and 20 yards, an 11-yard completion to Robert Johnson. More often, when North Texas did choose press coverages, Arkansas took its handful of shots at deep routes.

Dick threw five passes of more than 20 yards, completing 2 of them for a combined 98 yards and 2 touchdowns — the 61-yarder to Crawford and a 37-yarder to Johnson. North Texas also was flagged for pass interference on one of the deep throws.

“We just went out and played the game the way the game should be played,” Crawford said. “If the guys are 10 and 11 yards off the ball, you’re going to throw the short routes. When they come up, you’re going to go out there and take a shot at them.

“ We just went out there to prove a point... to go out there and be consistent.”

The consistency was especially welcomed by Lee, who was brought to Arkansas to remedy a passing game that traditionally has struggled to complement the Razorbacks’ potent ground game. Frustrations among the Arkansas faithful appeared to reach a boiling point after last week’s loss to Kentucky.

“Just getting some success in the passing game is so critical to our offense... to where we feel like we can go out there and throw the ball when we want to, and that’s the thing that happened [Saturday ],” Lee said.

Dick, who has had mixed results since replacing the sincedeparted Mustain, agreed. But after enjoying the highs of winning and the lows of losing, Dick was quick to add that Saturday’s effort will be wasted if Arkansas can’t build on it in the coming weeks.