Jaylin Williams: The bare minimum was Arkansas getting back to the Elite Eight

The Arkansas Razorbacks are on to the Elite Eight for the second consecutive season. Last year, Arkansas was a three seed in the NCAA Tournament, and defeated Colgate, Texas Tech, and Oral Roberts before losing to Baylor, the eventual national champions, in the Elite Eight. This season, Arkansas had its eyes set on a similar run.

The Razorbacks were a four seed in this year’s field. Arkansas defeated Vermont and New Mexico State over the first two rounds of the tournament before taking down Gonzaga, the NCAA Tournament’s top overall seed, in the Sweet 16 on Thursday night.

After Arkansas punched its ticket to the Elite Eight for the second straight year, forward Jaylin Williams admitted that making it back to this point was the bare minimum when it comes to expectations within the locker room.

“Yeah, the whole time that when the new guys came in, we preached to them like the bottom is us getting to the Elite Eight, and that’s what we want to do the whole time,” Williams said of his goals for Arkansas this season. “That’s what we’re working towards. Of course, we’re still hungry to keep achieving higher than what the expectations were, but we’re just going to keep playing hard. We set the standard for ourselves to keep going up, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

J.D. Notae had similar goals in getting Arkansas back to the Elite Eight

Arkansas has been engaged in three tight battles thus far in the NCAA Tournament, and the road to the Elite Eight has been far from easy. The Razorbacks won in round one 75-71, 53-48 in the second round, and took down Gonzaga 74-68.

After Williams shared that getting back to the Elite Eight was the bare minimum, Arkansas guard J.D. Notae shared a similar message.

“Just to piggyback off what Jaylin said, we knew we was going to have another great chance to make a run again,” Notae said. “We just had to stick together and just keep playing hard.”

While Notae and Williams are certainly glad to be back in the Elite Eight with Arkansas, the two most definitely have their eyes set on bigger prizes. Next up for the Razorbacks is a duel against Duke, with a trip to the Final Four on the line. Arkansas fell short last year at this point of the tournament, but the Razorbacks want to go as far as they possibly can in this year’s tournament.