Eric Musselman jokes about poor offense, homecoming after advancing to Sweet 16

Immediately after Arkansas held onto a 53-48 win over New Mexico State in the NCAA Tournament, head coach Eric Musselman joked about his team’s poor offense. Despite the low-scoring affair, he appeared happy to survive and advance on the way to a second consecutive Sweet 16 appearance.

During his postgame interview with TNT sideline reporter Evan Washburn, Eric Musselman joked about the poor offense against New Mexico State and complimented the defense.

“Well we spent the last 48 hours only talking about defense, I thought it was a defensive clinic,” said Musselman. “But I’m not sure I’ll have a job tomorrow because of our offense.”

He then discussed the impact of returning to a familiar area in San Francisco, where he coached during his NBA stint.

“I’ve got so many lifetime friends, my sons grew up there, it’s going to be wild to go back and play,” said Musselman. “Although it’s a different arena that the Warriors are playing in. But when I found out where there was different spots to go to a Sweet 16, in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, nothing better.

Musselman capped off his interview with a short answer on his favorite quality about this year’s Arkansas roster.

“Toughness,” said Musselman. “Toughness, being able to follow a scheme. We scrapped a lot of stuck we did all year defensively and we did what we call spied. I thought we did a great job on (Teddy) Allen, all of our guys read about him and saw what he did. And Au’Diese Toney, wow was he phenomenal individually.”

Arkansas now advances to face the winner of Saturday night’s final game between 1-seed Gonzaga and 9-seed Memphis. The Tigers led the top ranked team in the country by 10 at halftime.

Eric Musselman on slow start

Eric Musselman spoke about the slow start for both teams in Saturday’s Second Round matchup between Arkansas and New Mexico State during the first half. Knowing that someone would eventually find the basket, he called for his team to dial things in before calling some new offensive sets.

During his timeout interview with TNT, Eric Musselman shared the key to Arkansas’ success against the defense New Mexico State threw at them early.

“We’ve got to make threes if we’re going to be open, they’ve got the lane compact,” said Musselman. “Both teams playing really good defense. Somebody’s eventually going to score some baskets.”

After a follow-up question brought up the slow start, Musselman dismissed the idea that either team was experiencing nerves in the opening half. Instead, he pointed to a compact schedule.

“I think short turnaround is a little bit to do with it for sure. We didn’t get back to our hotel until 1:30 a.m. the other night, so I think right now we have some tired legs. We’ve got to try to figure it out.”