FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas Coach Tom Collen wasn’t sure Whitney Jones would play in Wednesday’s exhibition game against Rogers (Okla. ) State

He’s glad she did.

“She’s the one kid that we had tonight that I thought played with 100 percent effort all the time,” Collen said.

Jones, a senior post player from Blytheville, provided Arkansas’ only measure of consistency in an otherwise sloppy 74-58 victory over Rogers State before an announced crowd of 1, 249 at Walton Arena. Rogers State is an NAIA team in just its second season of existence — and played a game at Bacone College on Tuesday — but gave Arkansas fits until the late going.

“We expected a blowout, but we came out there and we weren’t on the same page,” Jones said. “We weren’t rebounding, we weren’t playing defense, we were just out of sync all night.”

Jones had been limited in practice because of a sprained ankle sustained in the team’s first official preseason workout, but scored 11 points in the first half as the Razorbacks built a 34-22 halftime advantage after leading by just three points late in the period. Jones then scored seven of Arkansas’ first nine points in the second half as Rogers State rallied to within four points.

The Hillcats, who had just eight players in uniform because of academic and injury problems, stayed within four points until senior Ayana Brereton followed a layup by freshman Ashley Daniels with a steal and threepoint play with 7: 11 to go. That gave Arkansas a 60-50 lead, and Rogers State didn’t get closer than nine points the rest of the way.

“It wasn’t a pretty game,” Collen said. “We never really set a tempo that we wanted to. We just kind of worked our way through it.”

Jones finished with a gamehigh 20 points, while junior transfer Ashley McCray added 15 points and 7 rebounds. Brereton scored 12 points and freshman guard Lyndsay Harris 9. Sophomore forward Brittney Richardson scored just 4 points on 2-of-8 shooting, but had team highs in rebounds (8 ), assists (6 ) and steals (6 ).

Rogers State got 14 points and 9 rebounds from Hannah Owen, 13 points from Hunter Peterson and 12 from Katie Rice.

“We came in here and competed like we expected to do,” Rogers State Coach Amy Williams said.

Junior forward Charity Ford (leg ) also was a game-time decision — and went scoreless in 14 minutes — while freshman post Ashley Daniels had 6 points and 7 rebounds in 13 minutes after missing the team’s Red-White scrimmage with a knee injury.

The rash of injuries and the addition of six new players to the 12-man roster made it hard for Collen to nail down a starting lineup, and he eventually went the five players — Jones, Ford, Harris, sophomore Ashlea Williams and freshman Julie Inman — who were at the top of the team’s “hustle board.”

“The statement that I really wanted to make was, ‘These are the five players that are on the top of the board, so let’s roll them out and reward them for that and see how they play together,’” Collen said.

Wednesday’s game served as Arkansas’ only official exhibition this season. The Razorbacks open the regular season Nov. 5 against Louisiana-Monroe at Walton Arena.

“I think we’ll look back at this game and we’ll find a lot of things that we need to get fixed,” Collen said, “and we’ve got 10 days to do that.”