With the season basically already lost, Arkansas showed some fight and some promise in a hard-fought 63-57 loss to Kentucky in Fayetteville to fall to 10-10 (1-6).
The Hogs jumped to an early led and led 26-24 at the half, but Kentucky led for much of the second half to pull out a low-scoring win. Kentucky came into the game with one of the nation’s elite offenses, ranking among the country’s best at effective field goal percentage, turnovers, and 3-point shooting. Arkansas posted its best defensive performance of the season (a 98 in our grading system) and held the Cats to a dismal shooting performance. But Arkansas lacked the offense to win.
One of the big things about this game was the lineup. Arkansas was without Trevon Brazile and Devo Davis, and Keyon Menifield didn’t play. Devo has apparently left the team – no comment on that until we learn more – and this was our first look at an Arkansas lineup without him playing a major role. In past years, Eric Musselman-engineered turnarounds have involved tightening the roster rotation. That didn’t work as well in 2023 due to a lack of consistency, and that’s been the case again this year, as Arkansas has too many specialists and not enough complete players to go with a small lineup.
But over the last two things, we’ve seen some interesting patterns.
Playing without three of its worst defenders, Arkansas had a very good defensive game. In our xRAPM grading system, Arkansas’ lowest-graded defenders are Devo (33), El Ellis (44), Jeremiah Davenport (45), Menifield (45), and Brazile (55). The Hogs were without three of them on Saturday, and that might explain why they looked good on defense. For reasons unknown, Devo has been horrible on defense this year. He’s never been a big stats guy – he doesn’t get many steals, blocks, or rebounds – so his impact comes from being a nasty perimeter defender who denies shooters and pressures the ball. The bottom has fallen out on that this year. The most generous theory I have is that style of defense is like an elite cornerback in football: you can be really good in coverage, but if the other cornerback on the field is the worst in the league, your good coverage doesn’t mean much because opponents will just pick on him. In that hypothesis, Devo plays well within the structure of a good team defense, but he isn’t a great individual defender and he isn’t even the guy who makes the team defense great. And when he tries to be that guy, he ends up trying too hard.
In its second game without Devo, the offense has fallen off a cliff. Our xRAPM model takes the sum of a player’s statistical contributions and then runs a regression over every possession (considering all 10 players on the floor at a time), and the output is an “adjustment” that is basically the difference between the sum of all players’ statistical contributions and what actually happened. Players who are routinely on the floor when their team’s actuals outperform the stats are the “glue” guys who are thought to make the team better through non-statistical means. For four years, Devo has been that guy. Outside of an outlier in the 2023 SEC season, he’s never been a good shooter. Despite being a perimeter passer, he doesn’t have elite vision and doesn’t rack up assists. He doesn’t draw contact and get to the line very well. But he’s always graded better than the eye test on offense. Devo’s non-statistical contribution “adjustment” is +4.3 net points per 100 possessions this year, easily the best on the team. When Devo is on the floor, Arkansas scores 109.0 points per 100 possessions; that’s also easily the best on the team. Devo played seven minutes last game and didn’t play against Kentucky; Arkansas failed to crack 60 points in either game.
If Devo is in fact gone for good, Arkansas has a facilitator problem. All of its remaining guards except Layden Blocker are score-first guys who have not demonstrated that they can make the offense better without shooting. Put them all on the floor together, and you’ll have too many cooks.
Speaking of Blocker, his +2.3 net points per 100 possessions of non-statistical offensive contribution is second behind Devo (related: Arkansas’ team efficiency of 107.7 with Blocker on the floor is also second-best behind Devo), and Blocker grades as a much better defender (+1.9 vs. minus-2.3 net defensive points per 100 possessions). Putting him on the floor with Tramon Mark and Khalif Battle might be a good move. I think we’ve seen enough of Ellis and Davenport to know that they aren’t going to be much help. Menifield offers more scoring pop, but the defensive downgrade may not be worth it.
Makhi Mitchell’s 13 rebounds highlight the fungibility of statistics. If I give someone a $5 bill and tell him not to buy a Mountain Dew with it, and he uses a different $5 bill he already had that he owed someone else to buy the Dew and then uses the $5 I gave him to pay the debt, has he followed my request? Technically yes, but he was only able to buy the Dew because I gave him $5. That’s because money is fungible: that is, interchangeable, easily swapped for something else. Statistics are often interchangeable.
Take Makhi Mitchell, whose rebounding stats have dropped from 10.6 rebounds per 40 minutes last year to 9.6 this year. Did he get worse as a rebounder? I would argue no. Instead, I think Brazile being on the floor meant that Brazile “stole” some rebounds that Mitchell would otherwise have gotten. Brazile isn’t a very fundamental rebounder and Arkansas is not a good rebounding team with him on the floor, but he’s tall, so he’ll get his own share (9.4 per 40 this year). But Mitchell snagging 13 boards and the Hogs rebounding well as a team with Brazile out highlights that Brazile isn’t making Arkansas a better rebounding team, but Makhi is, and most of Brazile’s rebounds are probably just stolen from teammates. That is, individual rebound count is fungible and subject to misinterpretation if you just look at box scores.
The better question is who is making Arkansas a better rebounding team? This is actually calculable: a ridge regression like our xRAPM (which tells us who contributes the most team points) can be run on rebounds instead of points and it will tell us who contributes the most to team rebounding. I’ll go ahead and get my hypothesis out there before I build the model: I think that despite similar per-40 rebounding numbers, Makhi is a significantly better rebounder than Brazile in terms of team contribution. If Brazile isn’t an elite rebounder, then his rebounding is not incremental; that is, he’s not doing anything that someone on the bench couldn’t do, and that might might explain why his overall xRAPM grade is so poor this season. Chandler Lawson is offering more shot-blocking, more assists, and fewer turnovers, and he probably would have a higher xRR (expected rebound contribution) as well.
Advanced Stats
Arkansas actually outscored the Wildcats 35-33 in halfcourt, but the Hog offense is just so bad. Kentucky managed to get enough transition offense to survive.
Arkansas rebounded well, chased the Cats off the perimeter, and defended really well around the rim. But Kentucky avoided turnovers and hit 3-point shots when they got them, and that was enough to win. Arkansas took almost 40% of its shots from midrange, which isn’t going to cut it, especially when they don’t finish well.
The position of point guard remains an issue, and Ellis probably played too much, going minus-10 in 32 minutes. Again, I would look at Blocker, who is a better defender and makes more non-stat contributions to the offense.
If I’m designing the rotation, here’s how I would do it, at least for a few games to see:
- PG Layden Blocker
- SG Tramon Mark
- W Khalif Battle
- PF Chandler Lawson
- C Makhi Mitchell
- Bench (in order of playing time): Keyon Menifield, Trevon Brazile, Jalen Graham
I would probably go ahead and take Ellis and Davenport to zero minutes. I don’t see how they’re going to help you.
Up Next
Missouri is winless in the SEC, so this figures to be a very winnable game. Arkansas turned its 2022 season around with a thrashing of the Tigers. While that would probably be too little, too late this year, it would be nice to at least feel like things are turning around.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.
The latest from Fayette Villains, straight to your inbox
Enter your email to subscribe and receive new post alerts and other updates. You can unsubscribe at any time.