FAYETTEVILLE — Only a few days away from Arkansas’ first pre-season exhibition game at Bud Walton Arena, there is a lot on coach Eric Musselman’s mind.
But as the Razorbacks inch closer to Monday’s 7 p.m. exhibition against Rogers (Okla.) State — their first outside competition since an August tour through Spain and Italy — he knows what his primary talking point will be with the team.
“I think the biggest thing is 1 through 13, play to your talent level every day,” Musselman said Friday in a Zoom news conference. “That’s the biggest thing. We’re going to talk about that pre-practice a lot today — playing to your talent level on a daily basis.
“I’m not sure we’ve done that the last three weeks 1 through 13, so we’re going to talk about it.”
Musselman said the plan is to show his fourth team at Arkansas video of last year’s team. He is hopeful his new roster will recognize the energy and effort the group played with as it made a second consecutive Elite Eight appearance.
“We’ve spent three years working to create an identity of being as hard of a playing team as there is in the country,” Musselman said. “We certainly want that to continue this year.”
The Razorbacks received a wake-up call last year in their first exhibition game, sneaking by Division-II opponent East Central (Okla.) University 77-74. Arkansas trailed the Tigers, coached by former Razorbacks graduate assistant Max Pendery, by 14 points with 11 minutes to play.
Musselman said he does not plan to talk to this year’s team about that close call, which came exactly one year before the Rogers State exhibition.
“I’ll let them figure it out,” he said. “A lot of (the players) think that they’re gamers and when the lights come on that maybe practice isn’t as important as a game, so we’ll let them feel their way through that process.”
Asked where he believes the team lies in terms of readiness to face live competition again, Musselman noted the Razorbacks are not defending to his standard of late.
Arkansas over the last two seasons, according to KenPom data, has finished in the top 11 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency. First-year Georgia coach Mike White said Wednesday at SEC Basketball Media Day in Birmingham, Ala., that the Razorbacks have become one of the elite defensive programs in the SEC under Musselman.
Given its collective length and athleticism, defense is expected to be among Arkansas’ strengths in 2022-23. But it may take time for the Razorbacks to reach their potential on that end of the floor.
“The truth of the matter is we play on Monday and then we play again on Saturday,” Musselman said, referencing an exhibition next week at Texas. “Two exhibition games in less than a week, and then we have three home games and then we go to Hawaii.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of eye-opening experiences for a lot of players out of the gate.”
Arkansas’ staff had upward of three meetings Friday centered on sifting through potential starting lineups for Monday’s game. Musselman said he may bring one or two starter-type players off the bench to provide a second-unit boost.
“Who starts, that might not be what the closing lineup is,” he said. “But we’re still going through some stuff. In the past, sometimes we’ve tried to not change the starting lineup at all. There’s been other years we’ve changed it up a lot.
“Not really sure where this kind of takes us. I’m sure whatever lineup we put out there Monday, that’ll change the next time we compete or sometime in the next few games.”