SEC Weekly, Vol. 4: The zones will continue until morale improves
or until you remember that you have to hit jumpers in 2023
I cannot resist a good storyline, and I cannot resist Jon Fendler essentially writing the story for me in December:
And, in some aspect, it upsets me that Jon has more or less already written the story on Arkansas with a few tweets. (I think he’s a great follow if you’d like to know more about under/overvalued college basketball teams, compared to the national consensus.) I came into this season feeling like I was very low on Arkansas - AKA, having them 15th instead of 5th - compared to the national consensus. On paper, it was a roster with alarmingly little amounts of shooting. It frankly reminded me a ton of the 2021-22 Memphis hype.
To be fair to Arkansas, some of what’s gone on is by no means their fault. Trevon Brazile’s ACL tear was not easy to see coming. Nick Smith only playing three games, and very likely being done for the season, was also not anticipated. Even so, based on the career stats of the team itself, you would’ve expected them to take all of 17% of their shots from downtown. While that was obviously an aggressive view of the situation, even with Brazile/Smith included, Arkansas would’ve been expected to shoot 29.2% from downtown. They’re at 30.8% on the season and 30.5% over their last ten.
In the midst of all of this, what Fendler has been noting all along is how many teams are zoning Arkansas that otherwise don’t do so. To boot, when you look at Synergy’s leaderboards in terms of percentage of offensive possessions spent playing against a half-court zone:
Only one of those teams entered the season as a serious national title contender. While Arkansas’s managed to win two in a row in SEC play, they’ve come against teams with a combined SEC record of 2-14. That, plus a comeback win against Missouri three weeks ago, are all the preseason #2 SEC selection has to show for in conference play. How did it get this bad? Why are teams zoning Arkansas so much, even when it means a lot of offensive rebounds? Is there a way out of this as we inch towards March?
Eric Musselman, a great coach, bungled the roster management
Both of the last two Arkansas teams have had offenses that spent the majority of games being pretty undesirable to watch. Torvik rates the last two teams, both of whom made the Elite Eight, as the 46th and 60th-best offenses of their respective seasons. This year sits at 78th, so while it’s worse, it’s not leaps and bounds beyond the last two seasons. Plus, this team is better at converting twos and at getting to the free throw line. So why are we talking about how bad everything is?
To get to the source, you’ve got to go back to the offseason. The headlines were all about the five-star freshmen and big-name transfers Musselman had brought in to replenish his roster. Certainly, on paper, it was an amazing collection of talent. However, it was missing something. Here’s the full list of players who entered this 2022-23 season with a career record of shooting 33.3% or better from downtown, AKA the break-even point of 1 point per shot:
Trevon Brazile (11-for-33, 33.3%)
That’s the whole list. And that’s where the problem starts.
Here’s a possession from late November against Troy. The Trojans are coached by Scott Cross, a coach who’s run all of 91 possessions of zone this season. This game alone was responsible for 38 of them. Why? Cross figured his team’s best shot, as far as he saw, was to play a system that forced Arkansas to shoot. He was right.
Troy, a 17-point underdog, hung around in this game long beyond what they should have, holding a lead with six minutes to go until finally breaking and letting a far more athletic Arkansas roster get shot after shot at the rim. However, this felt like the first warning. Arkansas went 6-for-24 on everything further than four feet from the rim, and while it’s a Troy defense that currently rates as the best in the Sun Belt, it was frankly a surprise to see this deeply talented team slug it out for 35 minutes against a Quadrant 3 opponent.
Plus, it represented a new season-low for jump shot attempts in any game. Arkansas got off just 17 against Troy and turned down open look after open look because no one on the roster seemed confident in taking them. Plus, the most used lineup in this game featured two complete non-shooters - Makhi Mitchell and Kamani Johnson.
Again, it goes back to preseason. Most of the defenses I heard and read of this roster and its shooting ability centered around Nick Smith, who we’ll admittedly never know how much he would’ve helped. Even so, I thought it was really strange to be heading into a season heavily reliant on one player - who didn’t play for the first couple of weeks! - to be saving your team’s shooting ability. As it stands, Smith and Brazile combined to shoot 17-for-49 (34.7%) from deep; the rest of the roster, as I type, is at 83-for-276 (30%).
BELOW THE LINE: the rest of why this Arkansas offense is bad, plus new SEC Power Rankings ($)