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That was not supposed to happen.
It wasn't like a guarantee that Arkansas would win, but we thought they had a shot. A&M is a respectable team even if they hadn't been playing too well coming into the game. If the Razorbacks lost, it would probably be a close loss. A respectable loss. But this? No. That wasn't supposed to happen.
51 points? That's it? And Arkansas only hit that because Anthlon Bell hit a three in the last minute. That three gave him 9 points, which normally would be great for Arkansas, but Wednesday night it made him the second-leading scorer on the team, which is a disaster.
Arkansas' previous season low point total? 67. 67! And that was against Michigan! One of the top handful of teams in the country. 67 is only two points from A&M's Wednesday night total! Fifty-freaking-one points. That's not just laying an egg, that's like laying a giant dinosaur egg. A triceratops egg.
So how does that happen? For starters, Arkansas went a gawd-awful 4-15 from the free throw line. Do you understand how bad 4-15 is? Sure, it's on the road, but that free throw line does not change and the Aggie crowd was hardly intimidating. The students haven't even come back from break yet. Even on free throw test day in my high school gym class, I made 7 out of 10. Even if you put me on television and put a group of mildly interested fans like A&M's crowd around me, and I only go 3 out of 10, that's still a better percentage than 4-15!
BJ Young went 1 for 2 from the free throw line the entire night, and he was the team leader. Nobody else had a percentage near equal to 1 for 2.
The Aggies made 22 free throws. Conveniently, that's 18 more than Arkansas made. A&M ended up beating Arkansas by 18 points. Arkansas actually made more field goals than A&M and shot a higher percentage from the field. Read that again. It is actually true. Here's a link to the box score.
And rebounding, my God the rebounding. Arkansas was out-rebounded by a whopping 22 boards. A&M was out-rebounded by Houston Baptist. Not Houston Cougars. Houston Baptist. The Aggies only pulled down 19 boards for that whole game. Against Arkansas? 47! Texas A&M collected 47 rebounds! From 19 to 47! Houston Baptist scored 59 points against A&M. Army scored 55. Arkansas scored 51.
I know Marshawn Powell had foul trouble and only played 12 minutes, but 0 points? At that rate, why not foul out?
Other guys who disappeared: Hunter Mickelson. 26 minutes, 4 points. He did have 5 rebounds though. Ricky Scott had 4 points in 21 minutes. The list goes on. Basically everybody other than Bell and Young failed to show up.
A&M only has 8 scholarship players. The hope was that Arkansas' depth would take over the game at some point, but that proved irrelevant once the Aggies took the game over quickly in the second half. The game was actually tight for most of the first half, with Arkansas leading for a good chunk of it, but A&M started a run just before halftime to take a 5 point lead into the break. It felt like a 15 point lead appeared just a couple dribbles into the second half.
It's tempting, especially after everything fans have been through with football, to just throw in the towel and wait on our #1 ranked Diamond Hogs to take the mound in 37 or so days. But there are still at least 18 more SEC basketball games, and the Hogs have shown they can play much better against much better teams than Texas A&M.
But still, that shit was unacceptable. I was really looking forward to that game. I had genuine excitement for it. Now I'm just pissed. I hope the team is too.
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Doc Harper is the managing editor of Arkansas Expats and is a regular contributor to College Football News and Sporting Life Arkansas. You can email him here and follow him on Twitter.