It’s no fun to lose, but football still is a game prefaced on being fun to play.

Prompted by a comment from special teams / tight ends coach James Shibest, Arkansas coach Houston Nutt drove that point home to his Razorbacks to start Thursday’s light practice in shorts.

Arkansas suffered a heartbreaker Saturday at Alabama where the Hogs rallied from down to 31-10 to lead 38-31 then lose 41-38 with eight seconds left. The Razorbacks held their last real practice Thursday, other than today’s walkthrough, for Saturday’s 5 p. m. ESPN 2-televised SEC game with Kentucky at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.

Right after the team stretched, safeties coach Chris Vaughn, a former player for Nutt at Murray State, raced 30 yards to make a perfect form tackle on a tackling dummy with Shibest and team managers in hot pursuit celebrating the tackle.

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“ We just wanted to show them the game is still fun, ” Nutt said. “ Somebody makes a play, it’s about enthusiasm. It’s about passion. I haven’t seen enough of that lately. Just think it’s important they know it’s still a fun game and tell your teammates about it when they make a big play.

“ Shibest noticed watching film that Michael Grant made a big play and not one came up and said, ‘ Good job ! ’ So we used the coaches to emphasize it. ”

Of course the real jumping for joy would come if moving Grant from safety to corner while Kevin Woods replaces Grant at safety shores up a Razorback pass defense that got beat on the corner by Alabama.

“ It looks good, ” Nutt said of the alignment, “ but we’ll see Saturday night for sure. ”

Everyone must get in the pass defense act, Nutt said, with the aerial circus orchestrated by Kentucky quarterback André Woodson.

“ We have to do a great job in pass coverage no matter whether it’s the tight ends, the backs, the receivers, and they’ve got a good rushing game as well, ” Nutt said. “ We have to do a great job all around in the secondary. Our guys have worked hard all week and we are going to be better. ”

Regarding the defense’s ups and downs falling behind 21-0 at Alabama and some lapses in the 46-20 victory over Troy, Nutt said, “ It’s a couple of things. Sometimes it’s alignment. Sometimes it’s a missed assignment. Little bitty things that can be corrected, and for the most part I think we have got that corrected.

“ The second and third quarter [against Alabama ] and most of the fourth quarter, our defense played real well. And offensively, if we don’t turn the ball over and put our defense in a bad situation, they are not on us 21-0. ”

All Razorbacks who played against Alabama are deemed healthy enough to play against Kentucky.

That includes running back Darren McFadden, who all but knocked himself out with 33 carries for 195 hardearned yards against the Crimson Tide. McFadden has practiced every practice this week after missing Arkansas’ final two series at Alabama with a slight concussion.

Thanks to McFadden and fellow running back Felix Jones running behind a powerhouse line, the Razorbacks again lead the SEC in rushing.

Not good enough, starting left guard Mitch Petrus said of the 1-1 Hogs, 0-1 in the SEC West.

“ That’s all fine and dandy but we’ve got to win some ball games, ” Petrus said. “ This is the biggest game of the year coming up. We don’t care if we run for 1, 000 yards and don’t win, then we haven’t accomplished anything. ”