It was ugly, but Arkansas got to 3-1 with a 79-75 win over Samford. The Bulldogs have been a strong mid-major program for several seasons under Bucky McMillan, and they appear to have replaced him well with Lennie Acuff, who did a nice job at Lipscomb and is in his first season.
Advanced stats
Arkansas didn’t finish great, and the effort was not great throughout, but this game was not as close as the final score suggests.
The Hogs’ average lead was 7.5 points, which is suggestive of a comfortable victory. However, the Razorbacks never pulled away late (like they did in the exhibition against Memphis and on Monday against UCA), and a late flurry from Samford made the final margin four points. Chalk that up to the Bulldogs showing much more effort and energy throughout the game.
Arkansas’ inability to force turnovers (just five points off turnovers) and pedestrian halfcourt offense (54 points in 55 halfcourt possessions) continue to look like they could be early areas of concern. I have little doubt that the halfcourt offense will improve as the freshmen do, but a lack of tenacity on the defensive end is a little concerning. Arkansas just isn’t able to punish opponents for their mistakes.
The Hogs shot just fine, with a few too many midrange attempts being the only complaint from me. But failing to offensive rebound (25%) or force turnovers (11% for Samford) highlight a lack of hustle. Samford didn’t get many offensive rebounds either, but the Bulldogs were much smaller and less athletic, so effort wasn’t really required to keep them off the boards.
Darius Acuff has had a negative plus-minus in both close-ish games this year, while DJ Wagner and Meleek Thomas have yet to finish negative. Acuff is getting plenty of production for himself, but he’s not setting Arkansas’ offense up very well: the Razorback offense as a whole is 8.4 points per 100 possessions worse with Acuff on the floor than when he’s on the bench. The Hogs get an eye-popping 16.0 points per 100 possessions better when Wagner is on the floor, and Thomas (plus-4.5) is also positive.
Here’s a look at the advanced stats for all players on offense so far this season. The first column, O-RAPM, is the key number, as it measures the total points per 100 possessions that the player contributes to the offense, adjusted for box score stats and quality of opponent.
You can see Wagner looks great, Thomas looks good, and Acuff is lagging a bit.
O-RAPM is a ridge regression run over every possession of the season. The model is fed a prior (measurable information that can help the model determine values for each player) that is calculated using the other three columns:
- O-On/Off: This is the stat mentioned earlier, how much better the Hogs are offensively with the player on the floor versus on the bench.
- Team O-Eff: Arkansas’ team offensive efficiency with this player on the floor compared to the average D-I offense.
- O-BPM: Offensive box plus-minus, a complicated statistic that approximates O-RAPM using all available box score statistics (points, field goal attempts/makes, free throws, rebounds, assists, etc).
So Acuff’s box score contributions (O-BPM) are fantastic, but Arkansas as a team has lagged a bit with him on the floor this year, which is hurting his O-RAPM number. The Wagner-Thomas-Knox combo has been best for the Razorback offense.
It’s obviously way too early to push the panic button on Acuff, since he’s just a true freshman who will likely improve. But if he’s going to be the primary ballhandler, he has to set up his teammates, not just get points for himself.
Highlights
Up next
The third of four tune-up games is Tuesday night against Winthrop. The Eagles are similar to Samford: strong mid-major offense, below-average mid-major defense. Winthrop will be a nice test because they’ve done a decent job of preventing transition possessions this year, so Arkansas’ halfcourt offense will need to play well to win easily.