Eric Musselman shares frustrations over free throw discrepancy against Alabama

Arkansas head coach Eric Musselman was absolutely livid at the perceived foul discrepancy in Wednesday night’s home loss to Alabama. During a stretch of particularly tough calls against the Hogs in the second half, Musselman was ready to blow a gasket. He begged and pleaded and screamed over foul calls, with his players following his lead. Anthony Black slammed the floor with both hands while sitting on the bench after one call, while one of their bigs punched the padding underneath the basket after another.

Tempers certainly fared, and the game as a whole was far from pretty, as 45 fouls were called on the night, resulting in 59 combined free throw attempts for the two SEC rivals. Musselman saw his team as the one who drew the short straw.

 “I can’t recall a home game that I’ve ever coached in that an opposing team had 36 free throws attempted,” he said after the game. “You know, I know they had talked about all of our free throws last year. This year, we’re at home and it happened, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a foul with 0.5 seconds left either, but it is what it is. Alabama deserved to win.”

Muss continued, explaining that his team were aggressors on offense despite not getting nearly the free throw attempts that the Crimson Tide did.

“They went through that stretch that was way too much for us to overcome based on our lack of shooting and lack of spreading the floor out. They took twice as many 3s as us and we only go to the line 23 times. So I don’t understand that. If we were taking a lot of 3-point shots I would understand it.”

While the free throw numbers were a bit skewed, the actual number of foul calls was not. Arkansas was whistled for 23 total fouls, just one more than Alabama, who was called for 22. So the fouls aren’t really why the Hogs lost. Musselman knows that and saw plenty of other reasons for his team’s defeat.

“But we’ve got to take better care of the ball as well. We didn’t shoot the ball well and we had 15 turnovers and gave up nine threes. You add those factors in and you’re not going to win many basketball games. It’s hard to win right now when you’re not making many threes. I don’t know if we will.”

Yeah, the three-point shooting is a major issue and has been all season. Out of 363 division one teams, Arkansas ranks 345th in three-point shooting percentage, making just over 28% of them. Perhaps that’s the area where the Razorbacks need the most improvement moving forward.