VIDEO: 5 Observations from Arkansas' 72-59 loss to Vanderbilt

FAYETTEVILLE — Five observations, with video, from Arkansas' 72-59 loss to Vanderbilt on Tuesday.

— Slow starts are killers

Tuesday marked the fifth straight game Arkansas trailed when Mike Anderson made his first substitution.

Slow starts have become commonplace, but the early game funk sunk to a new low against Vanderbilt as the Commodores raced to a 25-4 lead, inciting widespread boos from the fans in Bud Walton Arena.

Arkansas was able to rebound from big deficits in wins over Tennessee, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt. The Hogs were comfortable playing from behind. Successful, too.

But the comebacks were fools gold, to a certain extent. Rallies sap energy and constantly relying on flipping the switch isn’t a sustainable recipe for success.

That’s been evident of late as the Hogs couldn’t recover from double-digit deficits in losses to Oklahoma State, Missouri and now Vanderbilt.

This disheartening part about the latest slow start is that it came on the heels of the loss to lowly Missouri, a game that would seemingly serve as a wake-up call for a team trying to get back to the NCAA Tournament. Instead of playing with a sense of urgency, the Hogs came out flat. The fans who showed up to Bud Walton Arena were fed up.

The lackadaisical starts are baffling and have crippled this team’s tournament hopes just a week after they earned the best start in the program’s last 19 years.

— Vanderbilt can shoot 3s

The Hogs didn’t seem to get that memo.

The Commodores entered the game leading the SEC in 3-point percentage (38.6) and attempts per game (26.1). Their offense is built around shooting 3s and Arkansas played right into the Commodores hands.

Vanderbilt’s first 7 makes were 3-pointers. They were a blistering 10 of 15 in the first half and finished 12 of 23 even without suspended Matthew Fisher-Davis, their leading scorer (15.6 ppg) and 3-point shooter (62 makes, 39.2 percent).

They were able to generate their first-half 3-pointers in a number of ways. Let’s take a look at the 10 makes.

Vandy runs a little weave action (which it does a lot) late in the shot clock and Anton Beard is caught helping too much, sinking down too deep to deter a driving lane. The sentiment is understandable, given Arkansas’ issues with stopping dribble penetration, which was again an issue Tuesday. But he gives LaChance, who entered the game shooting nearly 50 percent from 3, an open look that he buries. Have to know personnel.

Here, Vandy gets an open Luke Kornet 3 after the 7-footer smartly pops out to the 3-point line against a scrambling Arkansas defense. He misses, but the Commodores grab the long rebound (1 of 11 offensive boards), which leads to another LaChance 3. Note that Moses Kingsley had switched onto a guard off the initial pick-and-roll and wound up rotating to contest Kornet’s shot. Either way, he’s well away from the paint and not in position to help on the glass.

Anton Beard gambles for a steal 35 feet from the basket and doesn’t get it, forcing Dustin Thomas and Jaylen Barford to help and creating an easy kick-out from Joe Toye to Jeff Roberson for the best shot in basketball. Vanderbilt turns the ball over more often than any other team in the SEC and did so on nearly 26 percent of its possessions Tuesday, but the Commodores are uniquely suited to make Arkansas pay when it couldn’t force a miscue.

Jaylen Barford is sagging off near the paint to help and can’t recover quick enough, providing enough space for Toye to get off the corner 3. More often than not, that’s what happens to late closeouts against one of the best shooting teams in the nation.

This is just bad transition defense against a Vanderbilt team that doesn’t really push the ball. The Commodores entered the game 13th in the SEC in average possession length (18.6 seconds). They create enough 3-pointers in the halfcourt that defenses can ill afford to give up freebies in transition.

Second-chance opportunities often provide the same quality of 3-point looks against a scrambling defense as transition sequences do. The Hogs fail to squeeze the rebound and gift Vandy an open corner 3.

Arkansas' struggles to hang with opposing backcourts off the bounce shows up again here. Dusty Hannahs gets faked out by a jab step, which forces Arlando Cook to dig down to cut off the driving lane. Kornet pops out to the top of the key and is wide open as a result.

Side note: Kornet’s feel for the game is really good. He understands how the defense will react to his teammates and positions himself accordingly. He pump-faked Kingsley and drove baseline for a one-handed dunk in an impressive first-half sequence. He finished with 12 points, 4 rebounds and 3 blocks, outplaying Kingsley by a wide margin.

But back to Vandy 3-pointers.

The Commodores crack the pressure and have numbers as a result, leading to an open Toye 3. The quality of looks Vanderbilt got all night had to be startling from an Arkansas standpoint.

The Hogs have switched across the board a lot lately, which can leave Kingsley and the rest of the bigs isolated beyond the arc against guards. Switches can also leave the defense susceptible to miscommunications. Anton Beard switches twice off the ball and seemingly anticipates making a third switch. But Manny Watkins doesn’t. Regardless of who is at fault, the result is Beard being way late to close on a Nolan Cressler 3. Swish.

The Razorbacks like to double opponents in the post. Here, they double Roberson, who entered the game shooting 39.7 percent from the floor. The Commodores have the floor spaced around him, which makes it easy for them to swing the ball around the horn and find Toye for an open 3. Watkins or Macon had to be ready to sprint to the opposite corner when Roberson got rid of the ball. There was some hesitation and Watkins’ eventual closeout was late.

For being a team that traps as much as they do, the Hogs need to be better at nailing rotations and recovering if the ball is swung from initial trap. Instead, they’re routinely late and wind up giving offenses open looks as a result. Same goes for the switches. If Arkansas is going to employ the strategy frequently, the players have to be on the same wavelength.

Bonus second-half 3:

Going to a zone has produced mixed results. Vanderbilt was able to get looks it wanted regardless of what the Hogs threw at them, for the most part.

Vanderbilt wound up posting a 116.1 offensive rating, a performance that dropped the Razorbacks to 12th in the SEC in defensive rating (110.3) in conference play, a number that’s trending downward and doesn’t include the recent calamity at Oklahoma State.

— Hogs struggle in halfcourt

Arkansas’ first-half offense was almost as much to blame as the defense. The Hogs were stuck on 4 points until Moses Kingsley hit a jumper with 10:32 left in the half.

The Hogs had 0 fast-break points in the first half and their halfcourt offense was ugly. They missed some quality looks, but there was also a decent amount of one-on-one late in the clock after failing to generate a good shot within the flow of the offense.

Beard curls off a Trey Thompson screen, drives, draws the defense and kicks to Arlando Cook. Vandy does a good job helping on Cook’s drive and he can’t make the Commodores pay by kicking to a wide-open Beard in the corner. The sequence dies and Beard winds up flinging a wild shot at the rim with the shot clock running down. The Hogs just have trouble stringing together sequences that get the defense out of position and take advantage of it.

There is plenty of time on the shot clock here, but Macon forces the tough baseline runner and misses everything.

Watkins forcing shots rarely happens, but it did here. The Hogs basically clear out the whole side of the floor for him and leave him to iso. Not ideal offense.

Watkins obviously isn’t a big scorer. Macon, Barford and Beard are. That trio combined for 10 points on 4 of 24 shooting. Arkansas isn’t going to win many games when 3 of its 4 best offensive weapons are that bad as a collective.

Arkansas’ efforts to enter the ball into Moses Kingsley in the post were largely thwarted. When he did get it on the block, Vanderbilt sent double teams on the catch and Arkansas didn’t have an available outlet in the first half. Several times, either Kingsley turned it over or the Hogs threw it away trying to get it to him.

The Hogs have talented scoring guards in Hannahs, Macon, Barford and Beard, but they don’t play as well off of each other as they could. Too often, they get into funks where they play your-turn, my-turn basketball, alternating going one-on-one after early offense fails to produce anything.

Sometimes it works. When it doesn’t, it looks ugly. The first half was the latter with the Hogs posting a 60 offensive rating and shooting 25 percent.

— Thomas, Cook benched

Mike Anderson went small to start the second half for the first time this season, rolling out a lineup of Barford, Beard, Hannahs, Watkins and Kingsley.

The small-ball look is what spurred the comeback at Vanderbilt and it immediately paid dividends for the offense.

First, the spacing is much better and allows the Hogs to play 4-out. Unlike in the first half, there is a Hog (Barford) conveniently positioned as an outlet for Kingsley when the double comes. Watkins makes the high-IQ baseline cut and the good ball movement is rewarded.

Now, when Kingsley posts up the help has to come from the perimeter, which gives Arkansas the opportunity to swing the ball for an open Hannahs 3.

Anderson never went back to Dustin Thomas or Arlando Cook, sitting both for the entirety of the second half. That duo along with Trey Thompson combined for 1 rebound in 14 minutes. Thomas scored Arkansas’ only points in the game’s first 9 minutes, but the other 2 went scoreless and made no impact.

Watkins as the nominal 4 in small-ball looks has been the best option for Anderson lately, just like it was last year. It’s a reality Anderson no doubt didn’t expect to be faced with after adding Thomas and Cook to the mix, but they’ve been inconsistent and are largely ignored by opposing defenses.

Tuesday marked the second straight game Anderson has gone to 4-guard lineups more than he had at any point prior. He went small for a whopping 16:55 against Vanderbilt after not deploying the look for more than 12 minutes in any other game this year.

He stuck with Watkins at the 4 for the first 8 minutes of the second half and then went with freshman Adrio Bailey the rest of the way.

Bailey played 15 minutes in all and finished with 4 points, 4 rebounds, 2 blocks and a steal. It’s important to note that, like in the Alabama game, his playing time came in a low-pressure situation with the game not really in doubt. But he was active and a +13, the only Razorback with a positive plus-minus.

He’s going to make freshman mistakes and probably won't be consistent, but Thomas and Cook haven't been consistent either and Bailey can impact the game in a way they can’t.

The Hogs are in desperation mode at this point, if they weren’t already after the Missouri loss. No lineup should be off the table.

Watkins has been steadily ramping up his minutes at the 4. Anderson made it a point to go with Bailey instead of the 2 upperclassmen most of Tuesday. It will be interesting to see if that was a move to get the freshman some run in a blowout for the second time in 7 days or if Cook and Thomas’ inconsistency will cause him to lean toward Bailey.

— Hogs outworked on boards

Vanderbilt outrebounded Arkansas 14-3 while establishing a 21-point lead. The Commodores wound up winning the rebounding battle 38-26.

Maybe as much as any other metric, the early rebounding issues highlighted the lethargy Arkansas came out of the gates with. Vanderbilt players beat the Hogs to loose balls and outworked them on the glass.

Vanderbilt missed 22 shots and grabbed 11 offensive rebounds, which led to 15 second-chance points. Yikes.

This Arkansas team has shown it can hold its own on the glass against good rebounding teams. Vanderbilt doesn’t fall in that category, yet the Hogs were handled on the glass. That’s largely attributable to effort.

Stray Thoughts

— Dusty Hannahs had 21 of his 24 points in the second half in an effort similar to the Minnesota game where he scored a bunch after halftime with the Hogs down big. He tends to play his best in small lineups. Normally, Arkansas makes 2 players available after home games, but Tuesday was the first time this year it’s been just one. It was Hannahs and he was honest and thoughtful. He handled himself well.

— Barford had 6 assists. One was a sort-of bogus one he was credited for on a jumper Bailey wound up hitting after a few dribbles. But another was a really nice dump-off that he fed to Thomas after drawing the defense on a drive. The offense would get higher quality looks in the halfcourt if the guards looked to drive and dish like this or drive and kick more often.

— Macon did not play well coming off the bench for the first time since Dec. 1. His defense was lacking at Missouri, which may have been the reason Anderson brought him off the bench. But nothing was working for him Tuesday.

— Attendance was 8,036. Honestly a bit surprised it was that high given what happened Saturday. Will be interesting to see what the turnout is next Saturday against Ole Miss after 2 road games and with a baseball game earlier that afternoon.