NBA News NBA News, Match Reports and UpdatesThe Arkansas basketball team (1-1) was thwarted by a tough Baylor (1-1) zone defense in the Razorbacks’ 72-67 loss Saturday at American Airlines Center in Dallas.
For the second straight game, Arkansas missed its first nine three-point attempts before forward Adou Thiero — who led the Hogs with 24 points — cashed a shot from distance with 9:20 minutes to go in the first half.
As a team, the Razorbacks shot 5-of-20 from beyond the arc (25.0%) and 24-of-58 from the field (41.4%) and turned the ball over 11 times against the Bears. Arkansas looked like a team that barely practiced against a zone in offseason drills, which is exactly what head coach John Calipari alluded to after the game.
“I’ve coached against Scott (Drew),” Calipari said. “He’ll go to that 1-1-3. He’ll even go to a 1-3-1. The press they used, we all knew what they were doing. We have our zone stuff in, but we’re trying to get our man stuff in. This is a brand-new team. These guys never played together. But we got organized and they came back and they did their thing.”
The bulk of Arkansas’ offensive failures came in the first 20 minutes of the contest, especially shooting-wise (11-of-30 FG, 2-of-12 3PT). Some halftime adjustments by the Razorbacks kept them in the matchup and even had the game within three points on three different occasions during the final six minutes of regulation, but it wasn’t enough to overcome poor execution.
“The reason Scott stayed in it [the zone] and that he should have, we look so bad against the zone,” Calipari said. “Why would you get out of it? So second half, I thought we did it. I thought we fought. We never gave up. We gave ourselves a chance. We took five bad shots at critical times and you’re trying to explain to the players, they’re not bailing you out, so go in there to make the shot or pass it to somebody.”
After the first two games of the season, Arkansas is shooting 9-of-39 from three (23.1%). Yes, it’s early, but those numbers are concerning especially when…
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Author : HawgBeat
Publish date : 2024-11-10 04:08:00
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