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After a couple of weeks of tempting fate, Arkansas basketball had its first setback last week. The team’s 88-66 loss to Oklahoma set off alarm bells that coach Eric Musselman had warned may be on the horizon even before they went off.
With a week between Saturday’s loss to the Sooners and this Saturday’s game against Hofstra in North Little Rock, Musselman said he is going back to “training camp mode” during practice with his team. It’s an approach he used last year after the Hogs trailed LSU by 31 points at the break and lost by 16.
Two games later, Arkansas went on a 12-game SEC winning streak.
This year is a bit different as the Razorbacks have six players in their rotation who weren’t on the team last year. Musselman said the new approach will be the standard.
“Just like last year after we got drubbed at LSU and we had Alabama coming up, I’m looking at this week (the same way),” Musselman said. “This is for the long haul, how we’re constructing practice.”
The 20-point loss was a sting for a team that had cracked the Top 10 in both the Associated Press media and Ferris Mowers coaches polls. The assembled college basketball media knocked the Razorbacks to No. 24 in the poll released Monday.
It was an important shock to his players’ system, he said.
“Sometimes when you win, it’s hard to grab players’ attention.”