FAYETTEVILLE — Observations, with video, from Arkansas' convincing win over Georgia in the regular-season finale.
— New month, new (old) Moses
Moses Kingsley’s senior year hasn’t gone the way he probably thought it would.
The preseason SEC Player of the Year has taken a backseat to Arkansas’ talented backcourt at times, while also taking a step back on the offensive end of the court.
Kingsley post touches have been an adventure this year, often not in a good way.
The senior forward hasn’t replicated the offensive numbers he put up in an All-SEC junior campaign. Some of that is the result of having better talent around him, which led to fewer touches and a lesser burden on him to score.
But he’s also just struggled most of the year, especially on post-ups. His field-goal percentage dipped to 45 percent coming into March and Arkansas had increasingly, understandably, gone away from getting him the ball on the block as often as it did early in the year.
But he’s been a different animal since March rolled around, playing more like the junior version of himself. It isn’t a huge sample size, but Kingsley turned in vintage performances in the second half at Florida and Saturday against Georgia.
He capped his time in Bud Walton Arena with 15 points, 9 rebounds and 2 blocks Saturday. Most importantly, he scored in efficient fashion on the block, going 6 of 10 on shots inside the arc.
These were all strong, sure moves. Kingsley was 4 of 7 with 1 turnover on post-up opportunities, a solid 1.0 point per possession and a continuation of his solid play in the second half in Gainesville, when he made his final 4 shots Wednesday.
This version of Kingsley takes Arkansas’ offense to a different level. Entering Saturday, Arkansas was averaging just 77.1 points per 100 possessions on Kingsley post-ups this year, according to Synergy Sports.
To put it in perspective, Western Carolina has the worst offense in the nation and averages 86.5 points per 100. Arkansas averages 117.9. Post-ups are generally not very efficient by themselves, but Kingsley post-ups were still only in the 45th percentile nationally.
He has flashed his ability to pass out of the post this year and can have a good feel for hitting cutters and shooters, at times serving as a vehicle for better shots because of the attention he drew. That is an important skill to have, one that can make post-ups worthwhile if an offense can play inside-out or utilize a post presence as a fulcrum of the offense. He dropped a few dimes Saturday.
But Kingsley had still struggled enough that Arkansas featured him on the block less and less. Until March rolled around, that is.
He has turned in a few throwback performances to start the final month of his collegiate career, scoring in crowds and with touch. Arkansas has done a better job setting him up for easy baskets, too, a Jabril Durham specialty that often hasn’t been there this season.
Great pass by Dusty Hannahs on the first. Jaylen Barford gets him the ball in deep position early in the clock on the second. Arkansas’ guards are good enough at breaking down defenses and getting into the lane that driving and dishing to Kingsley for easy duck-in dunks and layups could easily lead to several buckets a game.
Perhaps that will start to happen with more regularity during the season’s stretch run. Perhaps Kingsley is turning it on at the right time.
That Kingsley that showed up Saturday lifts Arkansas to another level. If he’s here for good, the Hogs are that much more dangerous heading into tournament time.
— Jaylen Barford, sparkplug
A glance at Jaylen Barford’s offensive numbers paint a picture of a high-volume scorer who is borderline elite in transition but inefficient in the halfcourt.
He’s almost impossible to stop on the break, averaging 122 points per 100 possessions, according to Synergy, best among Arkansas’ rotation guards.
But he entered Saturday averaging just 75 points per 100 possession as a spot-up shooter, which landed him in the 26th percentile nationally in that department.
He’s in the 27th percentile as a pick-and-roll ballhandler, averaging 62.3 points per 100. And he’s in just the 23rd percentile in isolation situations, averaging only 60.5 points per 100.
But those numbers are black-and-white. They don’t do justice to the impact Barford has when he’s on the court. He’s a highlight waiting to happen and can change the tenor of the game when he goes all Fast and Furious and starts playing with what looks like reckless abandon. In reality, he operates best when on the fly.
Barford plays with force, pushing the pace whenever possible and rampaging to the rim at any opportunity, using his strong upper body to ward off defenders and an array of mid-air tricks to get the ball off against shot blockers.
Saturday, he scored 15 on 6 of 9 shooting, dished 3 assists and grabbed 3 rebounds. The performance featured a number of creative finishes that have become commonplace for him.
His teammates feed off his energy. Arkansas wants to play fast. The game speeds up when Barford is on the floor, because he is always going full bore.
The Barford point guard experiment is over. Has been for a while. He’s embraced his nature as a scorer, averaging a team-best 16.1 points on a team-high 12.3 shot attempts the last 11 games.
He was the only Razorback who played with an aggression the entire time he was on the court at Florida, almost single-handedly keeping the Hogs in the game.
He had help Saturday, but he was no less aggressive. Of course, he had his usual assortment of finishes at the rim.
Kingsley enjoyed a renaissance in the post this week, but Barford may have the best post game on the team. When Georgia star J.J. Frazier checked back in with 4 fouls, Barford took him down to the block.
He’s flashed that Dirk-esque fadeaway a few times lately. Here, he goes all LeBron and chases down Frazier for the block in transition.
That has to be among the 4 or 5 best plays for Arkansas so far this year. Barford definitely has a few of those.
Barford has a combination of strength and athleticism that none of Arkansas guards, while talented, possess. Those traits combined with his recent mentality have made him a different player late in the season, one Arkansas hopes sticks around for March.
— Hogs attack, toy with Georgia defense
With forward Yante Maten still sidelined with a knee injury, Georgia was without one of the better rim protectors in the SEC. Maten’s 1.5 blocks per game rank 8th in the conference and he’s sent back nearly 150 shots in his almost 3 years in Athens.
Arkansas played like it knew it had an unobstructed path to the rim. The Hogs shot 71.4 percent (!) inside the 3-point line, including 15 of 20 on layups. Georgia’s lack of rim protection was glaring and Arkansas took advantage.
The Bulldogs went to a zone for long stretches. Arkansas carved it up, generating an array of point-blank shots and open 3-pointers.
Manny Watkins had a very Manny Watkins game and finished with 12 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists and a steal. The ease with which he got to the rim against the zone on those 2 possessions had to be startling for Mark Fox.
Arkansas seems like a team coaches would be hesitant to throw a zone at because of its shooters being able to find crevices. The Hogs didn’t have a great game shooting the 3 (4 of 19), but Georgia didn’t have a lot to do with that. There were open looks aplenty.
Maybe most importantly, Arkansas played fast, a telling show of the Hogs’ confidence and sense of urgency.
Arkansas was credited with 10 fast-break points Saturday, but that is a deceiving number in the sense that the Razorbacks pushed the pace most of the afternoon.
The key: the Hogs got stops. Georgia shot just 31 percent. The Bulldogs did damage on the offensive glass, turning 14 offensive boards into 18 second-chance points. But Arkansas got out and ran when it came up with the rebound.
The Razorbacks made 34 shots. Their average time of possession on those 34 makes: 13.4 seconds. That’s significantly faster than the 15.6 seconds they average this year, still a zippy number that ranks third in the SEC, trailing only Kentucky and Auburn. Savannah State leads the nation in offensive pace, averaging just 12.1 seconds per possession. Second: Marshall at 13.5.
Faster is better for the Hogs.
Arkansas’ offense often stalled in the halfcourt at Florida. The Hogs had only 7 assists on 21 makes. They were better Saturday, assisting on 15 of their 34 made baskets. Obviously it’s a lot easier to play against a scrambling defense. Transition opportunities promote unselfishness.
Arkansas’ backcourt talent is good enough that the Hogs can survive, even thrive, playing one-on-one in the halfcourt. It’s happened more than a few times this year.
But the Razorbacks are at their best when they’re in attack mode and playing off each other. They did that Saturday. Georgia made it easier with its lackluster defensive showing.
—Defense shuts Dawgs, Frazier down
Arkansas went zone for the first time about 12 minutes into the game. Here were the first 3 Georgia possessions against the new look.
Shot-clock violation, airball, shot-clock violation. Ideal sequences.
Truth is, any defense worked Saturday, for the most part. Sure, switching 1-5 like the Hogs did early leaves them susceptible to mismatches. But outside of Frazier, Georgia’s electric senior guard, the Bulldogs don’t have a ton of offensive weapons with Maten sidelined.
Frazier finished with 24 points, but made just 5 of 15 shots. The above airball was one of 2 he tossed up, which has to be a career-high. Arkansas did a good job making him see bodies and contesting his shots.
The Hogs shaded toward Frazier all game, cognizant of where he was on the court and content to let his teammates fire away. The rest of the Bulldogs were anemic offensively.
Arkansas pressured Georgia full-court, a move that served to get into the Bulldogs’ legs. Georgia smartly didn’t ask Frazier to beat the pressure most of the time, instead relying on other guards to bring the ball up. But the move was a heady one by Anderson all the same. The Bulldogs seemed to wear down in the second half.
Georgia made just 3 of 18 3-pointers, a bad but not necessarily surprising showing for one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the nation: the Bulldogs have hit 32 percent of their 3-pointers this season, which ranks 303rd out of 351 Division I teams.
Arkansas posted an adjusted 95.8 defensive rating, the second time in 3 games the Hogs have avoided triple digits. The outlier was the 114.7 they gave up at Florida. The obvious difference between the Auburn and Georgia games and the Florida outing is that the Gators are a tournament team. There are still very real, valid questions about how the Hogs can defend against talented offenses.
But they played well Saturday, making life difficult for a surefire first-team All-SEC point guard. That’s a step in the right direction.
— Beard bounces back
It appeared Anton Beard was still mired in his slump when misfired on his first 3 shots Saturday.
The misses made him 7 of 35 from the floor over his last seven-plus games, a stretch of sub-par play that led to his minutes being cut (just 26 combined against Auburn and Florida) and left Arkansas without a player who had been the team’s best distributor for the first two-plus months of the season.
But Beard turned it around, in a big way.
His line — 6 points (3 of 7 shooting), 4 rebounds, 2 steals and an assist in 16 minutes — won’t wow anyone. But the way he played was very encouraging, shades of the Beard that was one of the 2 or 3 best players on the team back in December.
Early in SEC play, Beard regularly got into the lane and found open teammates for 3-pointers or layups. That part of his game had been absent lately, but he flashed it Saturday.
Him making that happen instead of holding the ball beyond the 3-point line until he’s forced to chunk up a tough 3 late in the clock makes a big difference.
He was active. Instead of pounding the rock and being a ball-stopper, he attacked.
He'd mastered that nifty reverse layup by the time he left North Little Rock and it still works at a high rate.
The consistently good play of Barford, Dusty Hannahs, Daryl Macon and Manny Watkins had allowed Beard’s struggles to fly under the radar a bit, but Arkansas needed him to rediscover the balance he’d struck in his game early in the year.
Saturday was the best he’s looked in a while.
Stray Thoughts
— Arkansas did better on the glass in the second half and wound up winning the rebounding battle 38-33 after Georgia won it 19-15 in the first half. The Bulldogs scored 18 second-chance points, which, along with going 26 of 28 from the line, helped them hang tough for a while despite it feeling like the Hogs were playing markedly better. Once the Hogs started rebounding better in the second half, they were able to get out and run and pull away.
— Trey Thompson bounced back with a nice performance, finishing with 5 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 blocks and a steal. That was encouraging after he had his worst game in almost a month at Florida. Saturday, he played 23 minutes, more than Dustin Thomas or Arlando Cook (15 each). He was easily the most effective of the 3 and played well alongside Kingsley for stretches.
— Dustin Thomas had a nice little stretch to start the second half. Drew a foul on a post-up, knocked down a mid-range jumper and converted a hook shot in the middle of the lane. Had 6 points on 3 of 3 shooting.
— Arkansas put up 85 even with Daryl Macon going just 1 of 8 and scoring just 3 points. He had a quiet week, averaging just 5.5 points and taking only 12 shots. He could easily wind up going off for a big game or 2 next week and Nashville. This week, Saturday especially, just goes to show the balance the Hogs have.
— Jonathan Holmes finally got his bucket. He was 0 of 4 in his 5 other appearances. The irony is his make came on by far the hardest shot he’d taken, a baseline teardrop floater he lofted to about the level of the shot clock and somehow made. His misses coming into the game were all 3-pointers, all shots that looked like they had a chance of going in. The bench went crazy when he made it. So did the crowd. He finally has his name on his jersey and finally got his bucket. Good for him.
— Wasn’t quite a sellout but it was a really solid crowd. It got pretty loud a few times. Much better than any other one they’ve had this year, from a volume standpoint.