Everything Eric Musselman said after Arkansas’ loss at Ole Miss
Eric Musselman is not about to give up trying to make his Arkansas basketball team better.
It’s unclear, though, what else he can do.
It was a loss that provided Arkansas’ worst start in SEC play since 2008-09 when the Razorbacks won just two SEC games. Musselman, now in his fifth year as the Hogs’ head coach, has never encountered anything like this year’s team. Arkansas went to the last three NCAA Tournaments and the worst any of his four Nevada teams ever finished was 24-14.
Fourteen wins for Arkansas this year would be about where most people have the Razorbacks pegged at this point. With Kentucky up next and Arkansas perhaps without leading scorer Tramon Mark and likely NBA draft pick Trevon Brazile, the road isn’t getting easier any time soon.
That leaves Musselman grasping at something, anything to get his time animated enough to put up another fight.
Here’s what Musselman had to say after Arkansas’ loss Wednesday.
Tramon's migraine and Brazile's knee
T-Mark hasn’t practiced. Didn’t practice Monday or Tuesday. Obviously has a migraine. I’m not a doctor. He’s got a migraine. That is what it is. With Brazile, his knee has had soreness since Monday’s live practice and just wasn’t able to go in the second half.
The absences of players because of injury
I think injuries allow other people to step up and try to garner more minutes. Other guys got opportunities tonight. Every team goes through injuries. Every team goes through players in and out of the lineup. … You go back and you watch the film and try to dissect the players that got the extra minutes. We’re not shooting the ball well. We’re not defending the ball well. … Thought we moved the ball better tonight with our 13 assists on the 17 made field goals. But go up and down, 2 for 9, 3 for 10, 1 for 5, 0 for 5. Got to make shots and certainly defending becomes a problem. We were up on the glass at one point rebounding the ball. Then the second half the rebounding was heavily tilted toward Ole Miss.
Going deep into the bench
Everybody is getting an opportunity. Like I said, point guard play, turnovers, shooters. Shooters are struggling shooting the ball. The center spot we had zero defensive rebounds. There are a lot of areas. It’s not one particular player. It’s not one particular position. We’re getting outplayed at every position right now.
Galvanizing this team
That’s up to them. I mean, we haven’t talked about being a senior, being a junior, being a freshman. We have talked about ways to try to beat our opposition.
Brazile's knee
I’m not a doctor. Therefore, for me, it’s, right now it’s soreness. Any time there is soreness invovled. We don’t have our team doctor with us, so you go back home. Our trainer is really good. He’s usually spot-on with all the evaluations. Until I get further word, it is what Matt, our trainer, he’s been excellent since he’s been with us, he’s right now calling it soreness.
What was turnover issue early?
I thought Ole Miss came out super aggressive. They jumped passing lanes. … We just didn’t do a very good job being strong with the basketball. We made some adjustments and ended up taking care of the ball which allowed us to get shots on goal, but shots weren’t falling.
Why don't good practices translate to good games?
Right now teams are just outplaying us. You can have great practices but teams have size on us at certain positions. I’ll say it once and I’ll say it 100 times, i’d rather have a team play good in games and not practice well. We’ve had some guys not practice well over the last three years but produce in the game.
Injuries going forward
I think, I mean, hopefully I’ve coached in enough places and understand that injuries are part of the game. Like I said, an injury allows another player to get an opoprtunity that maybe he thought he should have or wants to have. It’s got to be next-man-up mentality. Injuries are part of what happens. Justin Smith was injured for a five-game stretch. We struggled when Justin was out. We struggled when Isaiah Joe was out. But we were able to beat TCU. … Last year TB was out for an entire season and we had other guys get the minutes TB would have played last year. Right now, we’re a team that lost four guys that have played in an NBA game this year and that’s a lot to replace as we’re starting to see this thing unfold before us. There are not a lot of teams from college basketball have four players go to the NBA. You’re trying to figure out what we can do. Daniel’s question about our seniors, you want senior leadership, you want guys to embrace. But we want all our guys (excited). We don’t have that many games left although we still have a lot left in conference play. We’ve got to try to figure out a way to get better.
