FAYETTEVILLE — Five observations, with video, from Arkansas’ 81-72 loss to Florida in its SEC opener Thursday.
— Allen triumphant in return
Florida sophomore guard KeVaughn Allen was the story of the game.
The Little Rock native greeted with hearty boos in pre-game introductions and every time he touched the ball for the better part of the first half. Allen, always reserved, wasn’t phased in his return trip back to his home state and proceeded to sink three of his five 3-pointers and score 15 of his 21 points in the first half as Florida took control.
He entered the game leading the Gators in scoring with averages up across the board. He was aggressive early, looking for his shot and not hesitating when he had a sliver of space. And he's not just a spot-up shooter.
What a move over a really good defender in Manny Watkins who recovered from the stepback enough to get a good contest.
Arkansas tried to mount a comeback a few times in the second half, pulling to within three in the opening minutes after halftime. The Hogs got to within eight around the midway point.
Horrible shot, great result. Arkansas then cut it to seven with less than seven minutes remaining.
Cold-blooded.
Malik Monk is the biggest recent in-state miss in basketball recruiting, but Allen isn’t far behind, especially considering he more than likely will be in college for four years compared to the one-and-done Monk. Mike Anderson has done a heck of a job with in-state recruiting in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 classes, but he and Razorback fans can only hope Daniel Gafford and the rest turn out to be in the same realm as Monk and Allen. Gafford seems like a good bet to be an impact player, but either Monk or Allen would be the best player on the current Arkansas team.
This year’s schedule gives both players chances to beat their home-state school early in SEC play. Allen made the most of his. Monk gets his shot next Saturday. Both could wind up being rude reminders of what could have been.
— Glaring difference in teams' ball movement, shot quality
Arkansas’ game against Sam Houston State featured some of the best sequences of ball movement the Razorbacks have put together this year in a performance that suggested the roster and all its different pieces were gelling just in time for SEC play. Wrong.
Arkansas is trying to run Mike Anderson's motion offense, with its focus on cutting and ball movement, with a group of guards who largely excel as one-on-one shot creators. There are glimpses of a cohesive unit making smart cuts to pierce defenses, but there are often still dry spells during which the floor is cluttered with half-speed cuts and players standing around, leaving ballhandlers to make one-on-one plays off the bounce on a floor poorly spaced for it.
Eight bodies with at least a foot in the paint with Moses Kingsley lingering just outside as Dusty Hannahs cans a tough and-1 runner.
Arkansas was largely out of sync on offense Thursday in a dissonant showing that featured a healthy dose of one-on-one action. The Razorbacks made it a point to feature Kingsley (more on that in a bit), but other possessions in the halfcourt too often had a tendency to unfurl without purpose or identity until one of the guards makes a play.
The Hogs don't move the floor at all here as the ball sticks and the shot clock runs down. Kingsley is noncommittal in setting a screen late in the clock, which leaves Macon no choice but to give it up to the big man in a less-than-ideal spot. Kingsley winds up scoring on a tough shot to save a less-than-stellar possession.
Arkansas has good one-on-one guards, but against a team with the length and athleticism that Florida has, that can be a foolhardy approach.
The difference between the shots Arkansas generated and the looks Florida routinely got was stark. Florida spaced the floor and moved the ball crisply on a majority of its possessions.
This possession comes against a zone, but would be effective against man, too. Florida stations shooters in both corners and runs a high-ball action, which triggers a quick three-pass sequence that results in an open 3. Sharp stuff.
Here, Florida has to reset after a Kingsley shot block. Note the spacing along the perimeter on the opposite side of the court allowing the pick-and-roll room to breathe. Arkansas switches to thwart the ball screen, but the spacing gives Kasey Hill room to get by Kingsley and draw attention in the paint as a smart Devin Robinson baseline cut frees him for a dunk. A great, mid-clock reset the Gators shifted into automatically and were all on the same page for.
Hill was fantastic much of the night and controlled the game when he was on the court, getting into the paint at will and setting the table for his teammates. He made sure the Gators got good looks more often than not.
Also, hat tip to Gator coach Mike White for running some crisp ATO (after timeout) plays that resulted in easy baskets.
Arkansas zones up on most, if not all, baseline out-of-bounds plays and this call by White features cuts that clear a path for the easy alley-oop to uber athletic Robinson, the best pro prospect on the court. He is slated as a second-round NBA draft pick by multiple publications. He finished with 17-7-3 and had a few highlight-reel plays. Maybe more impressively, he hit some nice jumpers.
— Macon a lone bright spot
Here’s the thing: Macon has just as much a tendency to take questionable shots and go one-on-one as anyone. But he’s been really good at it, especially the last four games.
He's been really good at hitting pull-up 3-pointers off the dribble.
Not much going on here, but Macon beats his man off the bounce and knifes through the defense for a bucket.
Macon has been Arkansas’ best offensive option recently, a title previously held by senior guard Dusty Hannahs. Through nine games, Hannahs was averaging 16.3 points and Macon 11.6. Macon has led the Hogs in scoring each of the last four games while averaging 19.3 per, while Hannahs’ average has slipped to 10.8.
Hannahs’ offense has suffered some from cluttered halfcourt possessions, even with him being improved off the bounce. But Macon has found creative ways to score, either from deep or on forays to the basket. Arkansas has needed his offense, especially when its other top players have struggled against lengthier opponents.
— Kingsley struggles
A quick glance at Moses Kingsley’s line infers a solid performance. The senior forward finished with 13 points, 14 rebounds and four blocks. Overall, Kingsley did do a pretty solid job grabbing contested rebounds on the defensive glass and had several nice flashes of rim protection.
But the above line masks a shaky, frustrating offensive performance that played a sizable role in Arkansas’ struggles on that end of the court. The Hogs seemed intent on featuring Kingsley early — for the second straight game, he attempted six shots before taking his first break after playing about six minutes.
But Florida is not Sam Houston State. Kingsley made just one of his first seven shots and finished 5 of 15 from the floor with three turnovers.
He struggled when the Gators double teamed him, leading to him being caught unaware of the second defender a few times.
He also had issues with the Gators’ length and athleticism in the paint.
Wild, low-percentage shots. Florida’s John Egbunu is taller and heavier than Kingsley. Kingsley struggled in the matchup much of the night and slipped back into being a bit of a black hole when he got the ball after dishing two assists against Sam Houston State. A talented passer from the post when he’s willing, Kingsley has just five assists the last six games. He needs to start playing with a better feel for the game.
His back-to-the-basket game has been more miss than hit this year and he's shooting only 46.4 percent from the floor. It will be interesting to see how if the Hogs continue to post him up as frequently as they have.
He impacts the game in other ways, but needs to start being more efficient for the amount of possessions the Razorbacks are going to him on the block to make sense.
— Gators’ length, athleticism spell trouble for Hogs
Robinson flashed his superb athleticism on the dunk above, one of the numerous shows of the Gators’ athleticism and length, both of which were better than Texas, previously the longest, most athletic opponent the Razorbacks faced.
The athleticism manifested itself in different ways, like Kingsley’s struggles in the paint. Florida blocked six shots and influenced a number of others. Here's Robinson engulfing a Dustin Thomas shot to erase what was actually a really good action by the Razorbacks.
Florida started 6-foot Kasey Hill and 6-2 Allen, then went 6-8 Robinson, 6-8 Justin Leon and 6-9 Kevarrius Hayes, then brought the 6-11 Egbunu off the bench.
Another example was Florida's ability to hound Hannahs with longer defenders.
Florida’s 16 offensive rebounds were another example of its athletic advantages. Arkansas tied the Gators on the boards overall (37), but Florida turned the large number of offensive boards into 18 big second-chance points.
Multiple chances because of Florida's athleticism and Arkansas' failure to box out.
This extra possession led to the alley-oop to Robinson.
Arkansas hasn’t been a strong defensive rebounding team all year. After the loss, the Razorbacks rank No. 249 in the nation in defensive rebounding, hauling in just 68 percent of opponent misses. Kingsley mostly did his part, but the rest of Arkansas’ bigs — Arlando Cook, Trey Thompson and Dustin Thomas — had just six boards in a combined 44 minutes.
Arkansas has to do a better job of limiting opponents to one shot. Some of that is on boxing out. Some of that, at least Thursday, was the result of the Gators just being longer and more athletic.
Stray Thoughts
— Great crowd even though the team didn’t give fans much to cheer about. Very underwhelming effort which will probably impact future crowds at least for a while, barring an upset at Kentucky next week.
— Florida’s ability to get second opportunities combined with only turning it over nine times limited the Hogs’ ability to get out in transition. Arkansas finished with just seven fast-break points.
— Anderson largely went with Cook over Thomas. Cook had eight points and two rebounds in 21 minutes while Thomas had two points and two rebounds in 12. Cook had some nice moments and continues to fit well in that second unit, but was -12 in his time while Thomas was +2. Obviously there’s noise in raw +/-. Thomas was more active than he had been against Sam Houston State, but was hesitant against Florida’s length, which led to him getting a double-clutch layup obliterated on one possession.
— Tennessee beat up on Texas A&M and was competitive in nonconference action, which makes an 0-3 SEC start seem possible given that the Hogs face the Volunteers on the road before heading to Kentucky next week. Such a start wouldn’t necessarily be the end of the world or spell the end of the Hogs’ NCAA chances, but it would make the margin for error a heck of a lot smaller and drive up the outside noise.
— Bailey got some run, but no C.J. Jones. Not necessarily surprising, but it also wouldn’t have been a shocker if Anderson had thrown him out there for at least four or five minutes in the first half. Being there early to watch the bowl game presented the opportunity to watch some really early pregame shootaround. Hannahs made 15 straight at one point. Jones also had long stretches of consecutive makes. Anderson needs to try to find little pockets of time for Jones. He’s a player who wouldn’t be overmatched by Florida’s athletes.
— There was a new intro video and it was SO much better than the one they used during the nonconference season. Like, not even close.
— Thompson struggled in some areas, but facilitated very nicely on a handful of assists, one to Beard and one to Cook.
— Thought the way they handled the Belk Bowl broadcast once it overlapped with basketball was pretty poor given that the evening was marketed as a setup where fans would be able to watch the bowl game in its entirety. With a 3.5-hour window between kickoff and tipoff, there had to be an idea that the games might overlap, but the bowl game was taken off the big screen around tip-off and then shown only intermittently as a small picture-in-picture on the video board. Some university staffers indicated there would be a split screen. There wasn’t. A lot of the time, the PIP video would just disappear for a while. Even with Arkansas melting down in Charlotte, the game was still in doubt until late. It was just a bad look and had to be upsetting to fans in attendance who thought they’d be able to watch the whole football game. Rant over.
— It’s one game. There needs to be improvement but there are at least 18 more against SEC opponents.