Three Questions about Arkansas Hoops with John Nabors

The Big 12 takes a break from conference play this weekend to face off against the much improved SEC on the hardwood. All 10 teams will look to keep the conference’s undefeated streak alive in this fifth year of the annual conference matchup (The Big 12 is 3-0-1).

OSU will head northeast to Fayetteville to take on the Razorbacks of Arkansas. OSU walloped the Hogs last season in Stillwater to push their record in the Big 12/SEC challenge to 3-1.

The Hogs are having an up-and-down season so far, but are a talented, senior-laden team. John Nabors, who covers the Hogs for SEC Country and is the host of the SEC Country Arkansas podcast, was kind enough to offer some insight into this Razorback roster by answering three questions.

You can listen to the full interview at the bottom of this page. As always, I apologize for my inadequacies as an interviewer.

Phillip Slavin: The Hogs had a good start to the year, then started SEC play 1-3 with a three-game losing streak. They’ve won two of their last three since then. What was the problem during the losing streak and have the Hogs solved it?

John Nabors: “The biggest thing, if you know Mike Anderson and his teams, it’s almost like it’s scheduled every single year, that they have a good team, a talented team, enough to make a run into the NCAA tournament… it seems like they just hit a snag right when conference play happens. There’s nothing really to explain it. Arkansas started off so strong. I think from what I’ve seen, and knowing the players a little bit, I think once they got into the Top 25 — a lot of players were upset that they were not in the Top 25 —  I think they let up a little bit. They started looking at it in a different light, approaching the game a little differently, and it really affected them. I think it caused some chemistry issues to where they were no longer getting a bunch of assists a game, they were no longer going out there and hitting good shots, getting bench production. It just seemed like they hit a wall. Now, whether or not they’ve overcome it so far, I think that they’re doing better in their performance. Their offensive performance against Ole Miss this past Saturday was telling of that. But they still gave up over 90 points to Ole Miss. So maybe they’ve found it offensively, but defensively it still seems to be an issue.”

PS: OSU has had someone score a career high in something like four straight games now. Who for Arkansas would be most likely to do that this Saturday?

JN: “That’s tough. If there’s going to be one player that does it, it’s going to be Jaylen Barford.”

[USATSI]

“He has been just a wrecking crew so far in the past couple games for the Razorbacks. He got 28 points this past game (against Ole Miss). He just shows so much consistency and he can beat you in so many different ways. He can drive the basketball — he’s as good of a driver as I’ve seen at Arkansas in some time. He creates shots. He’s a pretty good three-point shooter. He does all the little things and he can really make you pay. If there’s going to be one guy it’s going to be Jaylen Barford.”

PS: What is Arkansas’ biggest strength and its biggest weakness?

JN: Biggest strength for sure is transition. It’s the 40-minutes of hell that Arkansas loves to play, and if they go up against a team that can’t handle pressure, they will eat them alive. Now, the way that basketball is played now, a lot more teams have the ability to handle the pressure a little bit easier, but if you’re a team that doesn’t have a good point guard or doesn’t have good passing, something like that, Arkansas can make you pay. So their biggest strength is transition and running you down, especially late in the game when fatigue sets in.

If I’m going to go off their weakness, the cop-out answer would be defense, because they do give up a lot of points. But that may have something to do with the style. If I’m going to get specific with it, it’s free-throw shooting. Arkansas did well this past game shooting 28 of 35 free throws against Ole Miss. But once they got to conference play, I’m not kidding you, in those three straight conference losses, they were hitting barely over 50  percent from the free-throw line. And it wasn’t like they weren’t getting opportunities. They were getting there, they just can’t hit ’em. They don’t have a guy that can go out and hit free throws when it counts. So if this game is going to be a close one, and Arkansas has a two, four, 6-point lead late in the game, and Oklahoma State is going to foul them, that’s going to put OSU in a great position because (Arkansas) has struggled to hit free throws when they count.

If you’ve got 11 minutes, take a listen to the full interview. John and I talk a bit about the difficulty of staying consistent, delve more into which player could go off offensively for Arkansas, and John mentions a couple of “other” guys to keep an eye on.