FAYETTEVILLE — The final score was not indicative of the true nature of Arkansas vs Pacific on Monday night.
What was expected to be a rout was a one-possession game well into the second half, but the short-handed Razorbacks never trailed and eventually pulled away for a deceptive 91-72 victory over the Tigers inside Bud Walton Arena.
Considering No. 20 Arkansas (3-1) raced out to an early 16-point lead and was a 22-point favorite on BetSaracen — a number it was projected to cover by both KenPom and ESPN’s Basketball Power Index — it was a bit of a shock to see Pacific (3-3) pull within two on a Lamar Washington three-point play with just under 13 minutes remaining.
However, the Razorbacks ramped up their defensive pressure and held the visitors from Stockton, Calif., without a field goal for more than 10 minutes. Over that stretch, the Tigers missed 13 consecutive shots, including nine from beyond the arc, and committed four turnovers.
That allowed Arkansas to build a more of a cushion. It led by double digits for the final 8:34 and nearly backdoor covered, only for Washington to knock down a 3 with 17 seconds left to make the final margin.
“You saw how you finish a ballgame now, how you’re supposed to,” Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari said. “That made me happy, that we moved it, used clock, score late in the clock, bang. Do that twice, the game’s over. Now it goes from 12 to whatever and they don’t have enough time and enough attempts to beat you. They have to learn all this. So today was a good day for that.”
The Razorbacks came into the game with the eighth-best adjusted defensive efficiency rating in the country, according to KenPom, but didn’t much look like it in the first half.
Pacific shot 48.3% from the field and came out firing from beyond the arc, knocking down 8 of its first 13 attempts from deep. Calipari opened his postgame press conference by taking ownership of that, telling reporters that a major part of the game plan was to prevent the Tigers’ drives and make them shoot.
Adjustments were made at halftime and Pacific shot just 32.3%, including only 4 of 17 from 3-point range. That lowered the Tigers’ field goal percentage to 40% on the nose, which is the Razorbacks’ goal each game.
“We trust our defense,” freshman Boogie Fland said. “I think we’re top-10 in defense in D1 basketball, so just staying disciplined and like I said, making adjustments throughout the game. I feel like that’s what we did.”
Unfortunately for Fland and his teammates, there weren’t many fans in the arena to see it. Despite the game being announced as a sellout (19,200), Bud Walton Arena was nowhere close to being full. The UA was selling single-game tickets the day of and large sections of seats were empty, even in the lower bowl.
Here’s what the crowd looked like with a little more than 7 minutes remaining, when Arkansas was just starting to pull away:
In his postgame interview on the UA radio broadcast, which is also played over the arena PA system, Calipari thanked the fans who braved the rainy weather, but also issued a plea to those listening from home.
“If you have tickets and you’re not going to use them, I guess you could go online and give them back to the university,” Calipari said. “They’ll give them away. Or even better yet, give them to your neighbor. ‘Here, do you want to go to an Arkansas game?’ … Don’t sit on tickets. Either give them away or we’ll give them away, because this environment is so good.”
Here are several other takeaways from the Arkansas vs Pacific game for those who sat on their tickets and/or weren’t able to watch it live streamed on SEC Network-Plus…
Thiero Dominates Again
It’s becoming more and more clear that Adou Thiero is the best player on this year’s Arkansas basketball team.
He led the way in the scoring column Monday, dropping 23 points on an efficient 8 of 10 shooting. He also made 1 of 2 attempts from beyond the arc and was 6 of 7 at the free throw line. On top of that, Adou tied for the team lead in both rebounds (6) and steals (4).
“He’s getting better,” Fland said. “Future lottery pick I want to say. But we trust him, we love him and I’m glad he’s doing what he’s doing. It helps us (be) better.”
The 23 points were one shy of his career high set against Baylor earlier this month. Those two performances were also sandwiched around a 19-point outing against Troy.
Prior to this season, Thiero had never scored more than 16. In fact, across two seasons at Kentucky, he reached double figures just five times. Four games into his junior year, he already has three such games.
“What he’s done is he’s matured,” Calipari said. “He’s in better shape. He’s stronger. He’s better with the ball because he’s stronger. He’s a better player. He came to us out of high school and I think he was a three-star player.
“You stay two years and now you could be a lottery pick? I mean, think about it. Now I’m going to tell you if you looked at him his freshman and even his sophomore year physically, you didn’t see this. He’s grown into his father. His father’s 6’9” and that’s his dad. I coached his dad. I told him, ‘You’ve grown into your dad.’”
According to Stathead, Thiero is the first SEC player at 6-foot-9 or taller with 20-plus points and at least 4 steals in a game since Auburn’s Walker Kessler had 20 points and 4 steals (plus 7 blocks and 10 rebounds) against Ole Miss on Jan. 15, 2022.
Point Guard Shuffle
When he finally got around to looking at the box score from Arkansas’ win over Troy last week, John Calipari couldn’t believe his eyes.
“DJ (Wagner) had no points,” an incredulous Calipari said. “Are you kidding me? One of the best players in the country has no points. None. I didn’t sleep. Like, what can I do?”
The fact that the sophomore Kentucky transfer went scoreless seemed to genuinely bother the legendary coach — so much so that he called him into his office to talk about it. This time, it was his ears he couldn’t believe.
“He said, ‘Coach, you don’t have to worry about me,’” Calipari said. “I want you to think about that when you’re him and there are expectations — and he’s saying, I’m good.”
Even though Wagner was fine with it, Calipari went about trying to fix it. The solution he settled upon was playing him at point guard more, allowing him to make plays.
The result was him scoring 14 points on 4 of 9 shooting, including 2 of 4 from deep, in addition to dishing 5 assists with only 1 turnover in 35 minutes.
Another side effect was moving Boogie Fland — who has been the primary ball handler so far — off the ball, where he could better run the floor. That proved to work well, too, as he scored 20 points on 6 of 10 shooting.
Big Z’s Encore
No one in the history of college basketball has had a game quite like Zvonimir Ivisic did against Troy last week. The 7-foot-2 Croatian scored 19 points on 6 of 7 shooting from deep, plus added 5 blocks and 3 steals.
It’d be hard to follow that up with something better and sure enough, ‘Big Z,’ as he’s known, came back down to Earth — a little bit.
Ivisic still scored 15 points and was efficient shooting the ball, finishing 5 of 9 from the floor and 2 of 5 from beyond the arc. He also increased his rebound total from 2 to 5, dished 3 assists and notched another 3 blocks.
If that’s where his stat line stopped, it would have been a good game. Unfortunately, he had a 7 in the turnover column.
“You can’t have 7 turnovers and expect to play a lot,” Calipari said. “These other guys get healthy and you’re fumbling balls, then the other guys are playing. He did some stuff blocking shots when we needed him to, but I was running him to the rim. You’re not stepping out and shooting 3s. Get to the basket.”
As the only healthy big man, there did seem to be more of a concerted effort to get Ivisic the ball down low, but that’s where a lot of his turnovers occurred. It looks like he’s still trying to get comfortable with that aspect of his game.
Short-Handed Hogs
The reason Arkansas was down to only Zvonimir Ivisic is because Trevon Brazile and Jonas Aidoo were held out with injuries.
Aidoo, the Tennessee transfer, has been limited since the start of the season because of what’s believed to be a lower leg injury, while Brazile appeared to twist his ankle against Troy last week. Neither of them played in the second half of that game either.
With a nine-man core rotation, the injuries are severely testing Arkansas’ depth, but Calipari isn’t going to mope about it.
“I hope we get one back, but if we don’t, I don’t think we can forfeit,” Calipari said. “I think we have to play the game.”
Things could have gotten a lot more interesting on that front Monday night because two other players left the game at various points — Karter Knox with a finger injury and Billy Richmond III because of cramps. Thankfully for the Razorbacks, both of them were able to return to the floor.
Up Next for Arkansas Basketball
The Razorbacks will continue their four-game homestand by welcoming a familiar face to Bud Walton Arena.
Darrell Walker, an All-American at Arkansas in 1983 who went on to play in the NBA for a decade, is in his seventh season leading the Little Rock basketball program and will bring the Trojans to Fayetteville on Friday.
They are currently 2-2 with double-digit losses to Winthrop and Arkansas State, but do have one more game before playing the Razorbacks. That is a road game at Tulsa, which is scheduled for 7 p.m. CT Wednesday and will be streamed on ESPN-Plus.
As for the Arkansas vs Little Rock matchup, it has an 8 p.m. CT tip on Friday and will be televised on SEC Network.
Other Arkansas Basketball Tidbits
- Since starting the Baylor game 0 of 9 from beyond the arc, Arkansas has made 43.6% (24 of 55) of its 3-point attempts. Prior to that stretch, the Razorbacks had shot just 22.4% in their two exhibitions, the opener against Lipscomb and the start of the game against the Bears.
- After scoring exactly 4 points in his first three games, Billy Richmond III finally knocked down that barrier Monday. The freshman finished with 9 points on 4 of 7 shooting in 23 minutes.
- Arkansas made a concerted effort to attack the basket more in the second half and the result was drawing 16 fouls that led to 23 free throw attempts — of which it made 18 (78.3%). That was vastly different than the first half, in which Pacific committed only four fouls and the Razorbacks went 2 of 2 from the line.
- With the win, the Razorbacks ruined Pacific’s perfect record against Arkansas-based schools. The Tigers were previously 4-0 in such games, beating Arkansas State and UA-Fort Smith once each and UAPB twice.
More on Sparse Crowd Issue
It’s easy for the UA to frame smaller crowds as the responsibility of the fans to correct, but it’s also worth considering some ideas about how the UA itself could help.
For instance, Calipari has zero rotation players who are native Arkansan. So, by and large, the home crowds are less familiar with these 2024-25 players hailing from different corners of the nation than they were with the Musselman-led teams that had more natives like Devo Davis and Jaylin Williams on them.
Beyond that, it’s worth considering a few strategies that the athletic department could employ to get a lot more butts in seats.
More here:
Postgame Interviews
Arkansas vs Pacific Highlights
Arkansas vs Pacific Box Score
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