Razorbacks May be Getting Close to Apathy Settling in with Fans

Musselman may have to deal with one of Broyles' biggest fears with another poor effort

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Some of the Arkansas faithful are probably getting close to the breaking point. They like winning and a rather uninterested-looking Razorbacks pushed them there with a 77-64 loss to South Carolina on Saturday at Bud Walton Arena. It was never really that close.

It's probably getting close to what former coach and athletics director Frank Broyles always feared in the biggest sports — apathy. He seldom commented or even acknowledged good or bad criticism. Oh, he knew about it all, but he never acted like he was aware. "The worst thing is when nobody cares," he used to say.

This Razorback team appears to be completely dysfunctional. There were a lot of high hopes before the season, but the combination of poor shooting and bad defense caught up to them in a huge way Saturday afternoon.

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The Gamecocks shot a ridiculous 50% for the entire game. It's hard to do that in practice. The Hogs came out and didn't appear that interested from the start. It wasn't hard to see sitting on the floor. It was clear they weren't working that hard for rebounds on either end. South Carolina out-rebounded them, 39-27, and that wasn't really that close, either.

"We played against a good team that played with more energy and more connective-ness and more toughness than we played with," Eric Musselman said later. That was an under-stated assessment of what was obvious to everybody that saw it.

Now Musselman has a problem, sitting at 10-8 overall and 1-4 in the SEC. Forget a 20-win regular season. It's hard to look at the schedule more than a couple of wins down the road and most of that's because Vanderbilt and Missouri may actually be playing worse than the Razorbacks.

"We’ve got to play harder," Musselman said. "That was a pretty simple message. … The team’s got to play harder, tougher. We all see it and ultimately it always falls on the coaches, and so we have to do our part as well."

It's hard to blame Musselman. He didn't suddenly forget how to coach and what he does was successful for four years. This is on the players, no matter how many fans want to protect their heroes. The Razorbacks are simply not playing like it really matters to them, some more than others.

There are players that are essentially like a black hole. They get the ball and a shot is going up, no matter how good or bad it is. For the most part, those don't really work, especially throwing up bombs from 25 feet to beat the shot clock from running out. It looks like they just assume the fundamentals will happen. Mostly they don't play like they care.

Arkansas Razorbacks' guard Khalif Battle looks inside against South Carolina in a game where he scored 3 points on 1-of-3 shooting and had zero in every other stat line at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville, Ark :: Andy Hodges / allHOGS Images

"We’ve now had two home games where we’re not exhibiting the energy that we need to," Musselman said, referring to the loss against Auburn. "So obviously toughness, rebounding, offensively sharing the ball. There’s a whole bunch of stuff."

Don't worry. Musselman's trying every trick he can think of to turn this thing around. Sooner or later, the players have to be the ones to be accountable. Coaches can't play in the games, although the thought came up today they probably have a couple on the bench that would do better.

You knew it was bad when Musselman took a pair of timeouts within 30 seconds of each other in the first half. He almost never does that and hates burning those in the first half. He didn't have a whole lot of options, though. He's tried just about everything trying to get anything possible. Don't worry, he's trying to figure it out.

"What do you want us to do? Not try different players?" Musselman asked a reporting asking about finding any consistency playing so many different guys. These days he would likely stick with five players that could play some minutes and not see the other team's lead get bigger.

With a brutal week ahead, that apathy thing may bounce back. Going on the road to face Ole Miss on Wednesday at Ole Miss in Oxford before coming back to play Kentucky next Saturday. There will be a crowd for that one because it's Kentucky. They need to win or nobody will really care.

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