FAYETTEVILLE — Just when it appeared the Razorbacks hit rock bottom in an embarrassing loss at Auburn on Wednesday, Arkansas found yet another way to reach a new low point Saturday night.
An offensively challenged Texas A&M team that ranked 10th in the SEC in offensive efficiency entering the game hung 87 points on the road in a seven-point win to hand Arkansas its fifth consecutive loss and sixth in Bud Walton Arena this season - both records in Mike Anderson's tenure.
After pulling within 67-64 with 4:42 to play on Mason Jones' second bucket of the game, the Razorbacks needed stops on the defensive end. Instead, it was Aggies guard TJ Starks, who had turned the ball over seven times entering the final five minutes of play, who buckled down and stepped up for Texas A&M as Arkansas' defense folded.
Starks, on three consecutive Texas A&M possessions, scored in the paint and over Razorbacks defenders to balloon the Aggies' lead to 11 as part of a crucial 8-0 run that sent a majority of the 9,180 fans in attendance to the exits.
"It's very frustrating," said Arkansas forward Daniel Gafford, who finished with a 23-point, 13-rebound double-double. "It's frustrating when guards get in the paint when they're penetrating, but it's also frustrating when I can't help them on my end. I can contest shots but they'll still finish on me. But mainly it's frustrating because they're getting inside like that.
"We take pride in our defense, and at the end, defense is what we weren't playing."
Arkansas' defense was especially woeful in the second half. Texas A&M shot 66.7 percent after halftime and hit 4-of-7 3-point attempts. Aggies forward Savion Flagg hit a pair of big shots in the second half, Anderson said. Twice after the Razorbacks pulled within two points in the second half, Flagg buried 3-pointers to push Texas A&M's lead back to five.
Texas A&M's 49 second-half points are the third-most Arkansas has allowed after halftime this season behind only Florida International's 54 and Tennessee's 51 in Knoxville. The Aggies got points on 23 of their 35 possessions after the break and scored at a 1.40 point-per-possession clip.
In terms of offensive efficiency, Saturday was Texas A&M's second-best showing of the season (120.7), trailing only a 24-point home win over Marshall in late December.
"That’s when pride has got to kick in," Anderson said of the failure to come up with defensive stops late. "We had been doing a pretty good job throughout the game, but when we needed those stops ... Again, it’s understanding timing in the game that you’ve got to get stops. You've got to get stops. They end up shooting 58 percent and they are a team that probably scores 70 points a game. So credit them for making plays when they had to."
Flagg and Wendell Mitchell led Texas A&M offensively with 22 and 20 points, respectively. The duo combined for 24 second-half points on 8-of-11 from the floor and 3-of-5 from 3-point range. Aggies coach Billy Kennedy said Saturday was arguably his team's best offensive night of the season, particularly in the second half.
"The last game we won, I think we had 41 points in the second half, and to score 49, I think some of that had to do with late game, they had to foul and put us on the line," he added. "But we did a good job of handling their press and got some easy baskets in transition that we were able to finish and made some timely 3s that I think, no question, helped us win the game."
Following the loss, Gafford and Anderson both spoke to the Razorbacks' now five-game losing streak and sixth home loss of the season. Twice Anderson expressed how "disappointed" he is in Arkansas' sudden inability to protect its homecourt. The Razorbacks, in Anderson's first seven seasons, were virtually untouchable in weekend games in Bud Walton Arena, winning 42 of 47 games and outscoring teams by an average of nearly 14 points.
Arkansas has now lost four of its last five at home on Saturdays.
"I always talk about that this is one of the places that people come here thinking they don’t have a chance," Anderson said. "So I’m disappointed. I really, really am."
Gafford added that the home losses are a tough pill to swallow and that Arkansas can't enter home games with the belief that the outcome is already in hand based on past success.
"The fans, they spend their time coming to our games to watch us and we can't have them all come here and just have them disappointed, because this is home," Gafford said. "We've got to protect home. ... (Opposing teams) are coming here to play basically what this program has done. They're coming to play that.
"We've got to hold our part up and come out to play basketball and protect home and give happiness to the fans instead of playing the games and having fans leave at the end of the game when we're down."
While Gafford finished with a double-double, Isaiah Joe also added 20 points - his third 20-plus point game in conference play. Jones was the only other Razorbacks player to reach double figures in the loss.
Arkansas' path to that "something" Anderson says the team is still in the hunt for gets no easier next week with a road trip to No. 4 Kentucky on Tuesday and Ole Miss at home on Saturday. Anderson added that he must do a better job preparing his team and that his players must look in the mirror before moving forward.
"It's a quiet locker room right now because we should have never lost that game," Gafford said. "We came in the locker room and we were complaining about, 'We should have did this. We should have did that.'
"But when push comes to shove, we have to go out and play defense and play basketball."