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December was a cruel, cold month for the Arkansas basketball team. Spring, however, to steal and modify a phrase, is coming.
ESPN’s Bracketology dropped the Razorbacks from the predicted teams to make the NCAA Tournament with its latest update on Friday. And per the network’s Basketball Power Index, Arkansas faces long odds to return. Of 18 games the Hogs have remaining, 10 come against teams ranked inside the Top 30. Seven are against teams inside the Top 20.
By no means, though, is Arkansas out of it.
Coach Eric Musselman is known for taking lemons and turning them into lemonade. And it’s not as though Arkansas’ team in 2021-22 is actually that much of a lemon. They started the year 9-0 and were ranked inside the Top 10. Weaknesses were evident through those nine victories and Musselman even said as much. But what allowed nine straight wins was talent.
Arkansas has the talent. Even if it has yet to gel, more than half the season remains.
Guard JD Notae is still the second leading scorer in the SEC. Stanley Umude, Au’Diese Toney and Chris Lykes are still players who averaged double figures at their previous schools of South Dakota, Pittsburgh and Miami (FL). Devo Davis is still the player who broke out in last year’s NCAA Tournament. Jaylin Williams is still one of the best point-forwards in the sport.
And Musselman is still a coach who led a mish-mash collection of Razorbacks to the Elite Eight in 2020-21.
The margin for error is slim. Arkansas cannot afford to drop games against teams it is better than. Starting Tuesday when Vanderbilt visits Bud Walton Arena, the Razorbacks have to win. They don’t have to make a statement in that win, necessarily, but they must come out on top. The road is too tough to hoe going forward.
Follow that with a road victory at Texas A&M, an Aggies team, by the way, nipping at the heels of the Hogs in the power index. Beat a bad Missouri team back in Fayetteville after that and suddenly the Razorbacks are 3-1 in the SEC with a chance to visit Baton Rouge and knock off an LSU team that’s all but a lock for the Dance.
That sort of stretch is all that’s required to get the Hogs back into the hunt. Sure, it ignores the last month of the season and all the difficulty it will bring. But winning begets winning and if Arkansas can string together some in the early weeks of the new year, then things are far from over.