A Look at Arkansas

Arkansas is a pretty balanced team with 5 players scoring in the 9 to 14 point range. I haven't seen them play much, but I have been gathering up some information. From what I can tell, they are athletic and a good rebounding team. And they have some size that they can throw at D.J., including a 7-foot Senior (Steven Hill) who doesn't do a lot offensively but does average over 2 blocks per game. In addition, they have a 6-10, 254-pound Senior (Darian Townes) that averages 12 points a game. They also have a 6-1 Sophomore guard (Patrick Beverly) that averages 12 points and an impressive 6.8 rebounds per game. And their leading scorer is a 6-6 Senior (Sonny Weems) at 14.3 points per game. Their starting point guard is a 6-0 Senior and averages 9.3 ppg and 3.6 apg. Key reserve is a 6-8 Senior (Charles Thomas) with 8.6 ppg off the bench. It looks like they have 9 players that see minutes -- 6 of those players are Seniors and the other 3 are Sophomores. Prior to the SEC tournament, Arkansas was struggling a little bit and had lost 5 of their last 8 games. All 5 losses were on the road. However, they got hot in the SEC tournament with impressive wins over Vanderbilt and Tennessee before losing to a Georgia team that was on some sort of mission. The key to their big wins over Vandy and The Vols was rebounding and especially offensive rebounding. They outrebounded Vanderbilt 45-24 and Tennessee 34-22. In IU's losses to Penn State and Minnesota, giving up offensive rebounds was one of the biggest factors in those losses. But I am sure that Dan Jock-Itch (nickname credited to the IU Hoops Nickname Master, Ben Prifogle) will have that shored up this week. In SEC games were Arkansas scored 70+, they were 10-3. When they were held under 70, they were only 1-5.