Eric Musselman discusses Arkansas' turnovers, rebounding struggles vs. Tennessee

The Arkansas basketball team has had difficulty stringing together multiple stretches of good play this season and that was apparent again in a 75-57 loss to Tennessee on Tuesday. Arkansas’ turnovers were a major factor.

Tennessee essentially controlled the game from the outset, the more physical team and the safer team with the basketball.

The Volunteers turned it over 16 times while assisting on only eight of the team’s made baskets in the contest. That left the Hogs with far too much hero-ball going on and not enough teamwork based on good ball movement.

“They were physical and we were not able to withstand the physicality taking care of the basketball,” coach Eric Musselman said. “Certainly an assist-to-turnover ratio of 16-8 (sic) is not a good assist-to-turnover ratio. Certainly we would like the entire team to take better care of the basketball.”

Arkansas’ turnovers weren’t the only issue Musselman circled as a problem, though.

“The rebounding up front with our bigs was not very good as well,” Musselman said. “So a lot of areas. Unfortunately we’ve got one regular-season game and still a lot of areas that we need to continue to teach.

“Our younger players, I mean we have one regular-season game. They’ve got to continue to develop, as well.”

Tennessee physicality wins out

Prior into Tuesday night’s matchup, Musselman said the Volunteers are probably the best defensive team in the country, and they may have proven him right. Musselman spoke on the Vols’ menacing physicality after the game.

“Well they’re just so long and they’re so physical on both sides of the ball, it’s not just the physicality of Tennessee on the defensive end, the screen setting,” Musselman said. “And then when (Zakai) Zeigler got hurt they became longer, bigger, taller, more physical probably.”

Zeigler, Tennessee’s point guard and floor general left the game early after suffering a torn ACL. Zeigler is the Volunteers’ and the SEC’s assist leader averaging 5.4 per game, but he is by far Tennessee’s shortest player standing at 5-foot-9. As a result, the Razorbacks had to deal more with Vols guards like Jahmai Mashack and Josiah-Jordan James who both stand at 6-foot-4 or taller.

“But yeah they completely out-physicaled us, there’s no doubt about it. The loose ball game, the rebounding game, the screen setting was much more forceful than ours,” Musselman said.