Arkansas Coach Eric Musselman Told Us About This ... Again

One of these days we'll start paying attention and not be surprised by things like Texas

Author:
Andy Hodges
Publish date:
Oct 30, 2022 2:07 PM EDT

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — In hindsight we would have seen Saturday's exhibition blowout loss coming.

Arkansas coach Eric Musselman told us.

"I did say that we were in for an eye-opening experience based on how we've been practicing," Musselman said. "And understanding the veteran essence of their roster and understanding how hard they play."

Eric Musselman-Rogers State — Arkansas Razorbacks' coach Eric Musselman in an 83-49 win over Rogers State in the exhibition opener at Barnhill Arena in Fayetteville, Ark., on Oct. 24, 2022. (Andy Hodges / allHOGS Images)

That's the key phrase we don't really pay attention to as closely as we probably should. He's said it before and now we know that leads to fairly predictable results.

Nobody really saw Texas blowing them out by 30 to open a new basketball arena. Musselman really didn't appear to be that surprised.

The Razorbacks stayed within sight until late in the first half and the Longhorns pulled away. All the Hogs did was watch the numbers on the Horns' jerseys get smaller.

"This is happening in practice," Musselman said. "When one team gets up, the momentum just keeps going, so that’s something we’ve got to work through, even in practice. That’s really uncharacteristic of how we’ve been, to not have competitive stamina when somebody comes at you and goes on a scoring run."

The exhibition was really bad. The players had talked last week about taking this game like it counted (a lot of people still don't want to believe that it really didn't).

Despite the talent level, Musselman is trying to get everything to mesh and understand why they push them in practice. It is important.

"We have 11 news guys, so obviously we're going to be a work in progress," he said. "How far that work in progress gets, I don't know."

That shouldn't be surprising, either. Based on the previous years don't start making a lot of projections about the Razorbacks until mid-January.

By then Musselman usually has things sorted out and everybody's bought in or getting a great seat to watch the games.

That's the bottom line of why he wanted to go to Austin for this exhibition. He probably would have preferred the game to be closer or the Hogs play better.

But this is a great game for us. Not that we played great.

"We played as bad as any 40 minutes of basketball since I've been involved in college basketball," Musselman said. "The 11 first-half offensive rebounds, not defending the three-ball, 23 turnovers, 26 points off turnovers. It's a lot to overcome."

It should have been an eye-opener for the players, who walked out of Bud Walton Arena after blowing out Rogers State last week with a noticeable swagger.