Fayetteville–Just three weeks ago the Razorback basketball team was riding high after an impressive home win against Vanderbilt. The Hogs were tied for 4th in the SEC and fans were openly talking about the possibility of an NCAA Tournament bid.
Since then Mike Anderson’s young team has lost four of it’s last five games and the NIT is looking a lot more like the team’s post season destination than the Big Dance.
Anderson says it’s time for his players to pick themselves up and get going with just four games left in the regular season. Fearing that their legs may be failing them after a long grind with just eight scholarship players on the roster, Anderson has cut back on practice time this week as the Hogs prepare to host Alabama Thursday night.
However, even though the team’s status in the SEC pecking order has changed, Anderson told reporters on Wednesday that his message to his players has been the same from the opening day of practice.
“Nothing has changed,” Anderson emphasized. “We just had some bumps along the way and that’s what we talked about this season. It’s going to be a season where you’re going to have some peaks and you’re going to have some valleys. I think the true character of a team is how do you respond when you have some of those, those valleys.”
Freshmen B.J. Young carried most of the load against Florida at a time when his teammates were struggling to score points. Of his career high 30 points in the game Young said it was a temporary situation and not reflective of how Arkansas will play as a team in the future.
So are the players on this team beginning to lose some of the energy that carried Arkansas to wins over UCONN, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt at home? Is the current slump starting to get to them?
“We’re hanging in there, Young told reporters. “We just know it’s a long season. It’s up and down during a season and we’re just trying to stick together as a team and come out here and work hard every day.”
Anderson says if the Hogs are going to bounce back the first thing his players need to do is start playing the kind of defense they were displaying earlier in the season.
“I don’t think our energy level is there,” Anderson observed. “I don’t think we’re protecting the rim. We’re not playing defense. There are times when you have got to have patience on defense and I think sometimes we don’t have patience on our defense trying to get to the offensive end. A lot of that has to do with energy as well. When you run out of gas you can’t get to that next guy, that guy who is spotting up shooting that shot.”
