Preview and Thread: Arkansas vs ORU

The Hogs are taking on Oral Roberts and this might be the easiest game of the non conference slate. The Golden Eagles come in with a 4-9 record, a loss to a D2 school, and an average losing margin of 30 points to Power 5 Schools.

More On the Golden Eagles

Despite the poor record, Oral Roberts has a bit of a turn around in the past week. Their last two games were wins against Missouri State and Florida Gulf Coast. ORU really wants to slow the game down and will probably play some zone defense against the Hogs. They really don’t go too deep in their bench either so Arkansas will really have a chance to put up a huge margin if they control the tempo.

Projected Starting 5

Mike Anderson has played around with different starting 5’s in past seasons. This doesn’t feel like one of those years. All five feel pretty firmly entrenched in the starting 5 and the group is developing well together.

For the Golden Eagles, their two leading scorers are Albert Owens and Emmanuel Nzekwesi. Those two plus Javan White all have pretty good size so it will be another test for Daniel Gafford to work on defending without fouling.

3 Key Stats

The more you look at the stats, the more one sided this game looks. Looking at ORU’s awful defensive numbers, the Hogs could be on 100 watch for this one. The Golden Eagles have had a hard time stopping teams from shooting effectively, and their slow tempo is the only thing keeping things from getting really out of hand. If Arkansas can force fast break opportunities, then they’ll be able to name their score in this one.