Well, it happened. The one result capable of miring the whole season happened on Saturday evening in Fayetteville. Kentucky came into Bud Walton Arena and snapped the Hogs’ 17-game home win streak in front of a raucous crowd. The debate over who won the John Calipari move rages on when it could have been settled.

One game isn’t the end of the world. Kentucky, for all its issues, is still a talented team. Arkansas is too, and in fact, the Hogs could still win the SEC, although that’s much less likely now. Mark Pope and key Kentucky players deserve a ton of credit. They have talent and they came in with a good plan and played with tremendous energy in a game they desperately needed. Ultimately, this game came down to Kentucky’s ability to expose several issues we’ve seen from the Hogs all season.

Here are the four biggest, all of which we’ve discussed on this site in the past:

• The offense’s overreliance on Darius Acuff dribbling around to make something happen
• Acuff being a poor on-ball defender
• Slow starts to games, especially on offense
• The defense lacking a solid low post defender

The fourth one is going to end up being the biggest reason this team probably doesn’t make a run, but all four came into play here. Numbers two and four on this list help explain why the Hogs just couldn’t get enough stops against a struggling offense. The problem is that Nick Pringle just isn’t the post defender that Arkansas wanted him to be, so he’s unplayable as long as Malique Ewin is at least contributing offensively. The Hogs probably continue to start Pringle in hopes that he’ll eventually get it going like Jonas Aidoo did last year, but Aidoo was coming off an injury and had a longer track record of being a good defender. It does not seem to be happening for Pringle, and the Hogs have no one else that can defend in the paint.

The first one was why Arkansas’ offense couldn’t simply outscore the Wildcats. As we discussed in the preview, Kentucky is a different kind of defensive team than what we’ve seen from some other squads. Most SEC defenses focus on team defense and focus on stopping ballscreen offenses and other movement-based schemes. This leaves them vulnerable to isolating, driving guards, which is what Arkansas does best. But Pope assembled a defense that, while it has struggled to defend things like the pick-and-roll, it is full of elite individual defenders. They may struggle with switches or going under screens, but they can stay in front of a dribbling guard.

Ultimately, the “Acuff dribbles around and makes something happen” offense was a terrible matchup for what Kentucky was doing. The Wildcats stuck Otega Oweh – an elite individual defender – on Acuff and had him fight through screens as often as possible. The result was that Acuff looked more uncomfortable, but the more notable result just as notable was that other role players completely vanished, as Arkansas was unable to get them involved. Karter Knox attempted one field goal in 16 minutes. Meleek Thomas had some foul trouble, but ended up playing 26 minutes and attempted only one three-pointer, because his defender (mostly Denzel Aberdeen) never had to leave him to help on Acuff. Only Arkansas’ “chaos players” – Trevon Brazile and Billy Richmond III – were able to help, largely on offensive rebounds and broken sets.

Let’s dive into the stats and see if we can figure out what the Hogs can do to address these issues.

• 
  The case for Karter Knox
• 
  Box Score Breakdown: Kentucky 85, Arkansas 77
• 
  Matchup Analysis: Can the Hogs avoid a monster letdown against struggling Kentucky?

Advanced stats

You can see that Kentucky’s length, athleticism, and individual defensive skill caused significant problems for Arkansas. The Hogs played at their slowest pace of the season (17.8 seconds per offensive possession) and had a season-low two fast break points. When the Hogs did try to play fast, the results were poor (10 transition points in 12 tries, which is horrible).

Arkansas got the shot volume they wanted, posting an EPR of 107.7, but their shots just didn’t go in enough. You just have to throw up your hands at Kentucky getting 69% eFG% on 3-pointers; that’s significantly better than what we’ve seen from them all year, especially on the road. Not much could have been done about that.

The high free throw rate was the result of the crazy technical fouls. It was a Doug Shows game, so I guess you have to expect it, but all the fouls messed up the flow of the game for both teams. Kentucky got three technical fouls in 38 seconds to help the Hogs take the lead, but I thought the latter two were bad calls. However, the Hogs struggled to cash in their free throws, and after the third tech the officiating tilted badly against the Razorbacks, with several ticky-tack off-ball fouls aiding the Wildcats in retaking the lead.

There’s a lot to unpack here. Acuff’s 36% usage rate is too high. More of the offense needs to go to Knox, Thomas, and Ewin.

Knox was plus-six. Are you surprised? He seemingly did nothing but the difference between him and Richmond is that he keeps his defender on him on the perimeter because he’s a 3-point shooter, which opens up more driving lanes for teammates. (Caveat that single-game plus-minus is unreliable for drawing sweeping conclusions, but everything I’m saying here has been consistent all season long.) I like Richmond’s energy for spurts off the bench, but Knox is a better player who makes the team better at both ends on a more consistent basis. All the calls for Knox to lose his starting job to Richmond are misguided, in my opinion. The right path is to keep giving Knox starting minutes (16 was too few) and emphasize involving him more in the offense.

Pringle probably should lose his starting job. These slow starts are the result of Cal not starting his five best players, and Ewin has been one of the five best all season long. He wasn’t great against Kentucky – related: Malachi Moreno is a really good player – but he’s clearly the best option at the 5.

For Kentucky, Oweh is the man. Not shocking there.

Up next

Arkansas needed to go 5-1 in this middle six-game stretch and they are now 2-1. Very winnable road games against Mississippi State and LSU await. Don’t give up now, this team can still be pretty good if they clean up just a few things.

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