FAYETTEVILLE — It may not have been fun in the moment, but Arkansas’ late-game collapse at TCU in an exhibition that didn’t count is already paying dividends.
Just five days after blowing a 13-point lead down the stretch, the No. 16 Razorbacks avoided squandering an even larger lead and eventually pulled away for a 76-60 win over Lipscomb in their season opener at Bud Walton Arena.
Down by 15 about midway through the second half, the Bisons used an 11-0 run over a three-minute span to pull within 60-56, but unlike the Horned Frogs, they couldn’t get over the hump.
“(The TCU loss) helped us a lot and motivated us,” senior Johnell Davis said. “(It) taught us how to like – when we came back to practice, we need to learn how to close games and how to just finish them.”
Part of that learning experience involved better shot selection and it seems as though the message got through to the Razorbacks.
Over the final six minutes, Arkansas took eight shots. One of them was a missed 3-pointer by Boogie Fland, but the other seven were either layups or dunks — and it made six of them.
“You saw a finished the game a little different today, because we had worked on it,” Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari said. “Thank God we played TCU. Because if I let them try to finish the game, you know what? We would have shot balls, shot 3s, and all of a sudden they come down and you lose this game. So we kind of ground it out, let’s finish the game off, and I though the guys did a good job.”
Of course, the biggest shot of the game was a 3-pointer just prior to that closing stretch.
It looked like Lipscomb was about to make it a one-possession game, but Billy Richmond III blocked a layup by Logan Suber and Arkansas quickly pushed the ball down the floor. D.J. Wagner attacked the basket, but ran into traffic and kicked it out to Zvonimir Ivisic on the right wing.
When the 7-foot-2 big man gathered in the ball, he was defended by Suber, who is 14 inches shorter and was sagging off, so Ivisic pulled up and drilled the 3 to end the Bisons’ run and push the Razorbacks’ lead to 63-56.
“I remember I was alone,” Ivisic said. “If I’m alone like that, I’m going to take that shot every time.”
Lipscomb may not be a big-name program, but it is the preseason favorite to win the ASUN and entered the day ranked No. 126 in KenPom after knocking off Duquesne — which reached the second round of last year’s NCAA Tournament — earlier in the week.
It was also a challenge because the Bisons are one of the most experienced teams in the country and run a Princeton-style offense that can be hard to defend when executed smoothly.
“That is a very, very hard game to play out of the gate,” Calipari said. “Because you’ve got to be disciplined, and you better be in shape, because they’re going to run you for 25 seconds. And then we play fast and pressure. So we had guys exhausted three minutes into the game.”
Ultimately, the Razorbacks’ athleticism and talent was enough to away in the closing minutes and actually cover the 15.5-point spread set by BetSaracen.
“When you’re playing them, you feel like you’re trying to plug a lot of holes in the dam and at some point it usually breaks,” Lipscomb basketball coach Lennie Acuff said afterward.
Here are some key takeaways from the Arkansas vs Lipscomb matchup…
Defense Leads to Offense
While the closing stretch described above was when the Razorbacks put the game away, Lennie Acuff pointed to the end of the first half as when his team lost the chance at an upset.
The Bisons actually led for nearly 5.5 minutes in the opening half and withstood an 11-0 run to trail by just 2 with 6:30 left in the half. They were in a good spot until Arkansas turned up the defensive intensity.
Four consecutive turnovers in 77 seconds helped the Razorbacks flip things in their favor and build a double-digit lead at halftime.
They used a similar method in the second half, finishing the game with 25 points off of 19 Lipscomb turnovers. Many of those led to easy buckets, as Arkansas out-scored the Bisons 23-5 in fast break points.
It was the perfect recipe to beat Lipscomb, but John Calipari is skeptical that it’ll work against the high-major opponents on the schedule.
“We had to create a gap by creating turnovers,” Calipari said. “Well, against good teams you’re not going to just go create a turnover.”
Struggles Beyond the Arc Continue
For the third straight game, including the two exhibitions, Arkansas failed to shoot above 30% from beyond the arc. In fact, it was the Razorbacks’ worst 3-point shooting performance yet, as they went just 4 of 19 from deep. That’s an abysmal 21.1%.
“I’m glad we didn’t shoot more, because we’d have missed more,” Calipari quipped afterward.
In the win over Kansas, Arkansas shot 6 of 24 (25%) from 3-point range. It followed that up by going 7 of 24 (29.2%) against TCU. Combine the three games and the Razorbacks are 17 of 67 — which is 25.4%. It’s still a very small sample size, but that would have ranked next-to-last out of 362 Division I teams last year
Calipari is still confident Arkansas can improve that number, though. His main complaint are the types of 3s his team is taking. He’d like to see them throw the ball ahead for four or five transition 3s per half and open attempts resulting from dribble-drive kick-outs.
“We’re throwing it around the perimeter trying to shoot the three,” Calipari said. “That’s not how you do it. You get in the lane, you throw it, you make that three. You throw an extra pass and they’re wide open. If you can’t make those, I get it.”
It also doesn’t help that the players expected to be Arkansas’ top shooters have gotten off to a cold start.
Johnell Davis at least missed extended practice time because of a wrist injury, but heralded freshman Boogie Fland doesn’t have that excuse. He threw up eight 3s on Wednesday and only one connected — and Calipari made sure to point out that it rattled home before saying he wanted his freshman point guard to take more 2-pointers. He’s just 3 of 19 (15.8%) across the two exhibitions and the opener.
His Kentucky teams weren’t always the best at shooting from beyond the arc — his national runner-up team in 2014 shot just 33.2%, which was 214th nationally — but the Wildcats did lead the country in that category last year.
Arkansas doesn’t have to be quite that good, but Acuff told reporters what it’d mean if it could be better from deep moving forward.
“When you play that game against teams like this, you’ve got to figure out what hill you’re going to die on and we were going to make them shoot 3s,” Acuff said. “If they make 3s, you have no chance.”
Davis Knocks Off Rust
In his first real game at Arkansas, we finally got to see the real Johnell Davis.
Arguably the top transfer in the last portal cycle, the potential All-American was clearly rusty in the Razorbacks’ two exhibition games as he worked his way back from a wrist injury that caused him to miss extended practice time.
While the coaches liked what the FAU transfer did in other aspects of his game, Davis scored just 5 points against Kansas and 8 points against TCU.
He surpassed those totals in the first half against Lipscomb, scoring 9 points on 4 of 6 shooting in the first half, and actually finished with more points than the two exhibitions combined. Davis was 7 of 12 from the floor, including 1 of 4 from deep, and scored 15 points.
“He went at the rim,” Calipari said. “Like we need, I kept saying, why are you shooting jump shots? Go to the rim, and he did it.”
It’s also impressive that Davis managed to score 15 points despite not taking a single free throw. He told reporters that his goal was to be aggressive and get to the rim, as Calipari asked him to do, and get fouled.
However, the officials were letting them play Wednesday night. The two teams combined for only 23 fouls and 16 free throw attempts. Davis, despite how he played, didn’t draw any fouls.
Big Z Leads Effort in the Paint
Getting to the basket wasn’t just an are of focus for Johnell Davis or in the closing minutes. It was a point of emphasis from the coaches leading up to the game.
The result was Arkansas scoring 54 of its 76 points in the paint — or 71.1%. That’s significantly more than it did against Kansas (47.1%) or TCU (49.2%) in the exhibitions.
Guards — like Davis — driving into the lane helped with that, but it was something the front court contributed to, as well. Most notably, Zvonimir Ivisic went 4 of 4 from the low post, usually backing his man to the basket before finishing over him.
“That’s what we want Z to do,” Davis said. “Dominate in the post and just be the dawg that he is.”
Ivisic also went 1 of 2 from beyond the arc, with his lone make being the critical basket to snap Lipscomb’s run, and finished with 12 points in 21 minutes.
He did all of that despite his teammates not being particularly efficient with feeding him the ball down low, as Calipari scolded them for giving him low passes instead of getting him the ball up high.
“He’s really skilled,” Calipari said. “He’s got to want to play rough. He made a 3, which was a big 3 that stretched out the game. That’s all fine. If he does that post stuff and rebounds and blocks some shots and gets in better shape, I don’t mind him shooting 3s.”
Improving his game down low was a major area of focus for Ivisic this offseason and could be critical for the Razorbacks’ success in 2024-25, especially with their lack of depth at his position.
“if your team has no post presence, you’re a fraud,” Calipari said. “If you can’t throw that ball to the post and make that guy score or draw double-teams where you get the 3s we’re talking about, your team’s a fraud. I’ve said that every year I’ve coached.”
Jonas Aidoo’s Return for Arkansas
He was far from the most important player on the court for Arkansas on Wednesday, but Jonas Aidoo’s return to action was a welcome sight after he missed both exhibition games with an undisclosed injury.
John Calipari told reporters that he was only about 75% strength, but he still wanted to get him some minutes against Lipscomb.
“You’ve got to start playing at some point,” Calipari said. “And then tomorrow you may be hurting a little bit. Well, you haven’t played in a while. So we need him to get back because he gives us that veteran, rebounding, talking on defense. He doesn’t make the mistakes these other guys make, defensively, right now.”
Aidoo played 7 minutes, but it was pretty rough. He forced up a shot from the block on his first offensive possession upon checking in and then committed a turnover on the next trip when he couldn’t handle a pass from D.J. Wagner.
Later in the first half, the Tennessee transfer grabbed an offensive rebound, but immediately threw it to Lipscomb for a second turnover. After halftime, he did manage to grab a couple of defensive boards and made a shot, but he was minus-10 in seven minutes. That means the Razorbacks outscored the Bisons by 26 in the 33 minutes Aidoo was on the bench.
Still, the mere fact he was playing was a good sign for Arkansas basketball, as he is a preseason All-SEC selection after earning second-team All-SEC honors — and a spot on the SEC All-Defensive Team — for the Volunteers last year.
Up Next for Arkansas Basketball
The Razorbacks will go from playing the preseason favorite in the ASUN to playing the team picked to finish fourth in the Big 12 — which in this case means facing a top-10 opponent.
Baylor entered the season ranked No. 8 in the preseason AP Poll, but was blown out by No. 6 Gonzaga 101-63 in its season opener Monday.
“We know they’re a better team than that,” Johnell Davis said. “We know they’re going to come out trying to fight so we gotta stay on our toes.”
The two schools will renew their old Southwest Conference rivalry at 6:30 p.m. CT Saturday inside American Airlines Center in Dallas. The neutral site matchup will be televised on ESPNU.
Other Arkansas Basketball Tidbits
- The official attendance for Arkansas vs Lipscomb will go down as 19,200 because every game is sold out, but there were quite a few empty seats Wednesday night. The actual crowd was probably somewhere around 12,000 or so.
- It came in a quick spurt right at the end of the first half, but freshman Karter Knox flashed his potential by drilling a step-back 3 and blowing by his man for a thunderous dunk on back-to-back possessions to grow Arkansas’ lead from 6 to 11 at the break. Those were his only 5 points. “Karter’s one of those offensive guys we have to have to do what we’re trying to do,” Calipari said.
- After dropping 30 points and 10 rebounds against Duquesne on Monday, Lipscomb star forward Jacob Ognacevic turned in another solid game with a team-high 16 points on 5 of 12 shooting and 5 of 6 free throws, and 6 rebounds. However, he was just 1 of 5 from beyond the arc and committed 4 turnovers.
- Lipscomb’s other preseason All-ASUN selection, Will Pruitt, finished with 12 points and 8 rebounds. He had 15 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals before fouling out of last year’s game, which Arkansas hung on to win 69-66 at Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock.
- After the game, John Calipari said he received a game ball from athletics director Hunter Yurachek in honor of it being his first win as the Arkansas basketball coach. The Hall of Fame coach said he had the entire team sign it and he’ll add it to his office as a keepsake.
Postgame Interviews
Arkansas vs Lipscomb Highlights
Arkansas vs Lipscomb Box Score
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