Cold Shooting, Overall Badness, Leads To Blowout

It’s really hard to empasize how ugly this game was to watch. The final score was 75-54 in favor of LSU but even that doesn’t do it justice. Arkansas started the game shooting 4/28, finished with a 33% shooting percentage on the night. Jaylen Barford and Daryl Macon went a combined 2/11 in the first half. Arkansas was 18% from three point range.

And we haven’t even mentioned the defense yet. LSU nearly had as many points in the paint as Arkansas had total points. There was absolutely nothing you could point to in this one and say, “you know that’s the positive we can take from this.”

This loss pretty easily feels like one of, if not the worst losses under Mike Anderson. Yes, significantly worse than the Vanderbilt loss last year. That Vanderbilt team ended up being a 9-seed in the NCAA Tournament, while there’s a lot of season left I really don’t see the Tigers getting to that point.

Arkansas let that poor offensive performance lead to slower effort on defense. Weaker rotations and less ball pressure meant LSU got whatever they wanted. Then players took their turns trying to bring the team back with one shot, usually a bad one, and the cycle continued.

This game was set up to be a bounceback game for the Hogs after a tough road trip, instead they just face planted about as hard into the Bud Walton hardwood as you can. Last year after the Vanderbilt loss that this one keeps getting compared to, the Hogs rallied for five straight wins. This year the Hogs have Missouri coming to town next and four of their next six are on the road. It’s going to be a much tougher funk to climb out of, because the Hogs went and dug themselves an enormous hole that has the possibility of getting deeper.