FAYETTEVILLE -- A screening of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is all the University of Arkansas should need to get past Saturday's monumental win over No. 16 Mississippi State and point toward No. 13 Auburn, Coach Sam Pittman said on Monday.
Not the classic Spaghetti Western with Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef, but the weekly key-clip session the Arkansas Razorbacks conduct on the Monday after games.
The first half of Monday's team meeting this week featured a rehashing of what went right and what went wrong in the Razorbacks' 21-14 upset of the Bulldogs in Starkville, Miss. The second half focused on how Arkansas (1-1) will approach Saturday's 3 p.m. road date against the Tigers (1-1) and their heavily Arkansas-influenced coaching staff.
Pittman was asked on his Monday video conference how he and the coaching staff would go about getting the Razorbacks' heads out of the clouds after they snapped the program's 20-game SEC losing streak in Pittman's second game at the helm.
"I really don't think it's going to be a problem," Pittman said. "I'm going to show them this afternoon why we won. And I'm going to show them, you know we always have a good, bad and ugly video that I talk about to the team. I'm going to show them why we had success, what we have to work on to get better, and some things that are unacceptable. We'll get them all fixed."
There were certainly items in all three categories for Arkansas, which some analysts picked to go 0-10 in this SEC-only season.
"I don't think it'll be one bit of a problem," Pittman said of refocusing. "I really don't. I know our coaching staff has moved on, and our players usually do what we do."
On the plus side for the Razorbacks: tackling, sticking to the scheme and three interceptions on defense; improved coverage and protection in special-teams play; and pass efficiency by Feleipe Franks, a little better ball security and the emergence of De'Vion Warren on offense. Added to that would be the play of backups almost across the board, but particularly on the front and back ends of the defense.
The "needs work" section from the win at Mississippi State includes starting faster on offense, better blocking, an improved running game, eliminating dropped passes, more hang time on a couple of punts, developing a more intimidating pass rush and maybe breaking up a few more passes.
"We have to get started at some point, you know?" Pittman said when asked about getting more offensive consistency.
"Certainly against Mississippi State, we had our ebbs and flows in there, but we just have to be way more consistent. We have players that can get open, we have a line that can block, we just have to win first down and we haven't been doing that. Four more yards on first down, we have to get the series started, and we're just not doing it right now on a consistent basis."
Pittman told his players in the locker room Saturday night the win over Mississippi State was just the start for the Arkansas program.
So on Monday, he was asked how the Razorbacks could keep it going.
"As far as how you keep it going, this is a tough year," he said. "You have 10 SEC [games], not to say that your non-conference opponents aren't worthy of SEC-caliber play, but you have 10 SEC teams and it's a hard year.
"So, we're just going to stay the course. We're not going to change. We're going to do exactly what we're doing right now. I think our players believe in us. We certainly believe in them, and I think that's a big deal.
"The game prep and having them ready to play, I think if you asked them, I think they feel like they're really prepared to go play. Maybe see the play before it happens both on offense and defense, and again, I'm so happy with the staff that we have because they're good teachers. Our players believe in them, so I think we're just going to stay doing what we're doing now."
Because the Razorbacks traveled with less than 70 players and suffered injuries at multiple positions such as Rakeem Boyd at tailback, Treylon Burks at receiver, Montaric Brown at cornerback and others, it felt like they were hanging on for dear life to their 21-14 lead.
Yet the defense got a fourth-down stop from its 13 on an incomplete pass, which came after a muffed handoff led to a lost fumble at the Razorbacks' 21.
Then, after a 20-yard Mississippi State punt return to the Arkansas 30, the defense stuffed a run play on fourth and 2 from the 7 when Jonathan Marshall blew through an "A" gap to stop Jo'Quavious Marks in his tracks, then linebacker Grant Morgan and safety Joe Foucha combined on the tackle.
The Razorbacks opened as a 16.5-point underdog against Auburn, which has won four in a row in the series by a combined 157 points, an average of 39.3 points per game.
"We're not going to adjust practice, we're not going to adjust the way we talk to our kids," Pittman said. "Let's just go. Kind of like I talked about before, we're kind of a blue-collar university and state and football team. We're just going to get our lunch pail, go to work and see what happens on Saturday."