Eric Musselman identifies what went wrong for Arkansas vs. Vanderbilt

The Arkansas Razorbacks dropped a home game against a struggling Vanderbilt Commodores team, snapping a modest two-game winning streak. With that, head coach Eric Musselman saw his team fall to just 14-14 on the season.

After the loss, Musselman identified what he felt went wrong for Arkansas against Vanderbilt.

“We weren’t drawing free throws, even though we went to the line 31 times tonight,” Eric Musselman said. “And you saw the shooting percentage from three. Against a zone, you’ve got to be able to make some open threes, and we didn’t do that.”

Arkansas shot 83.9 percent from the free-throw line in the loss. A bigger issue ended up being shots from three-point range, especially against Vanderbilt’s zone defense, which saw the Razorbacks make only 10 of 30 shots from deep. Despite that, Eric Musselman didn’t think they were forcing it, just that the shots didn’t fall.

“Our bread and butter is still, we’ve been pretty good against teams that have played zone. Tonight, shots didn’t fall and they kept the lane pretty compact and tried to force us to beat them from over the top.”

In the end, Arkansas came up just short, losing 85-82. Still, Eric Musselman expressed more frustration in not playing better defense ahead of that point. Had they done that, the Razorbacks may not have needed to try and tie the game late.

“We lost a close game that we had the ball with the opportunity to potentially put it into overtime. We put ourselves in that position because our lack of defense for, in my opinion, for most of the game.”

Arkansas has had issues on defense all season. The Razorbacks currently rank 312th in scoring defense, giving up 77.9 points per game. In Arkansas’ last three games, which saw the Razorbacks go 2-1, they didn’t allow more than 73 points in a single game. That defensive lapse, in the end, proved costly.

Part of what makes the loss to Vanderbilt frustrating is that the Commodores have also been having a long season. With the loss, Arkansas moved to 5-10 in SEC play, which is 12th in the conference. Vanderbilt, meanwhile, is 13th at 3-12 in conference play.

The end of the season is coming quickly. Arkansas only has three games remaining. That final stretch includes two games against opponents that are currently ranked. Next up is the first of those ranked opponents, with Arkansas traveling to Kentucky to take on the Wildcats.