Khalif Battle shares importance of winning back-to-back SEC games

On Saturday, Arkansas won its second-straight SEC game for the first time this season. While the milestone didn’t make headlines, it was a massive moment of encouragement for Arkansas, including starting guard Khalif Battle.

“It was super important. We got to keep it going, though,” Battle said during the postgame press conference. “The energy in the locker room is a little different right now. It feels like everybody’s on one agenda, and that’s just just to win.

“[We have to] grind it out as best we can. It don’t matter if it’s one point or 20 points, we just want to get to get a win and no win is easy in the SEC. To be able to come out here and get a win, we’re just trying to keep the ball rolling.”

Battle did more than enough to keep the ball rolling in Arkansas’ 88-73 win over Missouri on Saturday. In the victory, Battle exploded for a career-high 42 points while shooting 11-15 from the field and 6-10 from beyond the arc. The 6-foot-5 senior also connected on a perfect 14-14 from the charity stripe.

Battle’s previous career high was 32 points. Following the win, Battle could hardly believe his stunning performance.

“I don’t know, it still hasn’t really sunk in that I had, you know, the amount of points that I had,” Battle said. “It’s a great feeling, but it’s even better that we got the win. So, if I would have had 40 and we would have lost, nobody would have even remember that. So it feels good.”

Eric Musselman praises Khalif Battle’s performance

Battle wasn’t the only in awe of his performance. After the game, Arkansas head coach Eric Musselman raved about Battle’s standout showing.

“That’s about as great an offensive performance as a player could have,” Musselman said. “Because when you look at the efficiency of it, only 15 field goals and then to get 42 points, that’s insane. He’s done a great job all year of drawing free throws, 14-of-14 from the foul line. He had six defensive rebounds. That’s probably as good a night as he’s had from a defensive rebounding standpoint.

“The theme coming into the game was we had to get a shot on goal, we couldn’t have live ball turnovers and he did a great job,” Musselman said. “He played 37 minutes and 34 seconds and didn’t have a turnover while he scored 42 points. Kind of unheard of, to be honest.”

With the win, Arkansas is 14-13 and 5-9 in conference play. With a first-round SEC Tournament bye still on the table, Khalif Battle and Co. will look to finish the season strong. On Tuesday, Arkansas will square off against Vanderbilt at 9 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.