With the 83-75 victory of No. 20 Arkansas over LSU on Saturday afternoon at Bud Walton Arena, the Razorbacks extended their winning streak to nine consecutive SEC game wins, with the only defect during that stretch coming in January 30, with an 81-77 road loss against Oklahoma in the SEC / Big 12 Challenge. The Hogs went 7-0 in February and improved to 19-5 overall and 11-4 in the SEC game.
The Razorbacks finished the games this month and have two more regular season games remaining on the schedule, in South Carolina on Tuesday (March 2) and at home for a makeup game against Texas A&M on Saturday (March 6) ). While Hogs was 7-0 in February, Aggies did not play a single game due to one postponement after another (in the end, seven cancellations and one postponement), so the makeup game may not even be played.
“To spend a whole month without losing is a great achievement and many teams don’t have a chance to do that, “Arkansas senior striker Justin smith said. “I am very proud of the way we got together after the Oklahoma State game. I think we really found out in a way. We are playing our best basketball now and we will continue, keep pushing. “
During the race, Arkansas avenged its January losses against Missouri, Alabama and LSU with executed opportunities for revenge in February. The other conference defeat came when they fell 79-74 in Tennessee on January 6, and Tennessee was on the schedule only once. It is possible that they will end their journey of revenge if they meet the Volunteers at the SEC Tournament. This group was already 2-4 in the SEC game on January 16, with an 81-68 loss to Missouri, a 92-76 loss to LSU and a 90-59 loss to Alabama along with a loss to the Vols.
“For sure. These games, like, when we lost to them in the back of our minds, we were like, ‘Yes, we’ll have them both back'”, Arkansas junior guard JD Notae said. “It’s something that you just need to sit down and sometimes enjoy because, I mean, it doesn’t. And for us to do that, I mean, it’s special.”
“I think the last two opponents in particular (Alabama and LSU), I think we were embarrassed by our performance and I think we had an extra advantage for ourselves,” Arkansas coach Eric Musselman said. “I think even the Missouri game. You brought those three games and I thought of the three. Those were the three games this year that we were not happy with our performance.”
Even if the momentum takes a dramatically bad turn, Razorbacks cannot do worse than 19-9 this season if they lose all of the remaining games (including at least one guaranteed game in the SEC Tournament and the high probability of one in the NCAA Tournament. If Arkansas wins the next two games, it will have the SEC’s best game record since 14-2 in 1993-94, the year it won the national championship. , but it would have a better winning percentage for having less loss due to the cancellation of the game at A&M.
“Would we have liked the games at the beginning of the season to have been better? – Probably,” said Smith. “The way we’re playing now, I think it’s just building blocks, and I think it’s only going to pay dividends in the long run, having these two consecutive difficult games at the end of the season going into the postseason. So we’re just looking develop this going forward. “