FAYETTEVILLE — Moments after No. 20 Arkansas finished off a 45-10 win on Saturday, Georgia Southern coach Chad Lunsford was asked if he could find some positives from the game.
Lunsford refused to take the bait from the his team’s radio crew about what happened to his Eagles (1-2).
Arkansas (3-0) piled up 633 yards of total offense — 400 more yards than Georgia Southern.
“Right now it’s hard to find positives,” Lunsford said. "You can find spurts of it and little things to talk about, but then you get into moral victories and that’s not what it’s about. It’s about winning and we have to find a way to go win this week against (visiting Sun Belt foe Louisiana-Lafayette) and go 1-0.
“When we got back in the locker room, we talked about the first three games and how we are not where we want to be. We’re 1-2 we have to figure out how to come back from the dead and go into conference play and play what we’re capable of, and right now we haven’t played what we’re capable of.”
The Razorbacks passed for 364 yards and rushed for 269.
Arkansas averaged 8.7 yards per play, including 12.2 on first down, while Georgia Southern got just a paltry 2.1 yards on its first-down attempts and 3.7 yards total on 63 snaps.
Georgia Southern linebacker Randy Wade, who led his team with seven tackles, noted there were no surprises from Arkansas.
“It’s what we went up against every day in practice,” Wade said. “It was all about preparation. The things that they ran, it was what we expected, but we just couldn’t stop them.”
The Eagles were 5 of 18 on third-down conversions, in part because they were put in third-and-long (nine or more yards) eight times. The Eagles converted only one third-and-long.
The Razorbacks also forced the visitors to punt 10 times. Georgia Southern had four penalties for 20 yards, including an offsides penalty on a punt that gave the Razorbacks a first down deep in their own territory.
“There were a lot of discipline issues as far as self-inflicted penalties,” Lunsford said. “Those pre- and post-play penalties are not good, and drops and things like that where we can’t sustain drives. We have to stop those things or the bleeding will never stop.
Georgia Southern quarterback Justin Tomlin, playing in his first game this season after being out the first two games due to an academic suspension, got 76 of his team’s 233 yards on the Eagles' only touchdown that came in the second quarter.
Tomlin completed 11 of 23 passes for 65 yards. He also rushed for 65 yards, his total less than his touchdown run due to sacks and keepers for lost yardage.
He relished the big play, which cut Arkansas’ lead to 21-7 with 7:22 left in the second quarter.
“They were in man coverage and they blitzed and there was nobody on the backside, so I just did what I had to do,” Tomlin said. “I had to score. Lot of energy, lots of excitement.
“It was a great feeling. It was a big game and I was ready to get back out there, but it did not go the way we wanted it to or the way we expected."
Tomlin took a lot of hits from Arkansas.
“I’m all right,” Tomlin said. “I took some shots, but I’ll be ready for next week. Our real season starts next week.”
Lunsford stressed his team has to reboot quickly.
"I think the big piece is we stay together and continue to work hard, and go try to be better this week and win the conference,” Lunsford said.