Arkansas lost two football recruits to Florida earlier on National Signing Day, and to top off a frustrating day, the basketball team went to Gainesville and never could quite get enough stops to overtake the Gators, falling by four points (but we covered!)
The Razorbacks, as they have for every road game this season save for the Texas A&M game, played well on the road for the most part. The 83 points scored by the Hogs is the most Arkansas has ever scored against Florida and lost. They likely would have blown out the Gators with the same performance last year (and how does the SEC schedule Arkansas to go to Gainesville two years in a row with no games in Fayetteville?).
But defensively, Arkansas' small lineups had too much trouble. The Hogs only blocked one shot and simply couldn't get the stops to necessary to grab the lead.
Unfortunately for the Hogs, Florida picked Wednesday night to have what might have been their best free throw shooting night of the season. Florida ranked 13th in the SEC coming into the game, making just 62% of their freebies in conference play, but Wednesday night, they made 30 of 36 shots, 83.3%. They still shot 51% from the field, so it's not like that was all they did. They made shots.
It's been a rough day for Hog fans. This was just kind of the icing on top of the cake. KeVaughn Allen hit a nice stepback jumper over Jimmy Whitt that was somewhat poetic.
The Hogs are at the midway point in the SEC season. The second half schedule is much more favorable to them. Let's go ahead and end this here and hope this last stretch of the season goes better.
Oh, shoutout to Anthlon Bell for hitting over 1,000 career points. Big time milestone for the senior. Congrats on writing his name into the record books.