FAYETTEVILLE — The effects weren’t immediate, but it turns out that Arkansas basketball’s loss to Tennessee in the SEC opener was a wake-up call that proved vital to the Razorbacks’ upset victory over St. John’s Saturday.
Tenth-seeded Arkansas knocked off Rick Pitino and the second-seeded Red Storm 75-66 in the second round of the men’s NCAA Tournament despite allowing 28 offensive rebounds. That’s the same number of offensive boards Tennessee gobbled up in a 24-point blowout on Jan. 4.
Eleven weeks ago, that dismantling on the glass broke the Hogs’ souls in a road defeat. In March Madness, Arkansas fought back instead of folding, leaning on the lessons from that embarrassing loss in Knoxville, Tennessee to set up a date with No. 3 Texas Tech in the Sweet 16 Thursday.
“I tried to explain to them how it would be and they didn’t listen, so we went into that game and got absolutely shellacked,” John Calipari said.
“But I was able to tell them, if you don’t become more physical, if you don’t do this together, you’re going to take a lot of these. And we did. We took some early.”
How did Arkansas overcome all of St. John’s second-chance opportunities? The Razorbacks simply matched the aggression.
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In the loss to Tennessee, Arkansas grabbed nine offensive rebounds and lost the overall margin 51-29. The Razorbacks settled for too many 3-pointers and didn’t earn enough trips to the free-throw line.
Against St. John’s, the Hogs rose their output to 16 offensive rebounds and trimmed the overall deficit to 51-46.
That uptick allowed Arkansas to score 18 second-chance points, and the Hogs actually won the points-in-the-paint battle 46-38 against the Red Storm. Calipari applauded his team’s physicality after the win, and the players say better habits were built in practice after a realization they hadn’t been good enough.
“After that game, we started doing box-out drills every day,” said Trevon Brazile, who gobbled up 20 rebounds in the two NCAA Tournament games. “Rebounding drills every day. We just kept doing that, and it’s paying off for us. I know (St. John’s) got a lot of offensive rebounds tonight, but it’s more of a mentality thing.”
Calipari said he burned the tape immediately after a difficult road loss to South Carolina in the final weeks of the regular-season. On Saturday, he admitted to taking the same approach to the ‘shellacking’ against Tennessee.
Calipari knows conceding he didn’t watch film from a loss invites all sorts of disapproval from his biggest critics.
In the end, the approach worked. Arkansas is two wins away from the Final Four thanks to a lesson in physicality against the Volunteers.
“We could have given up right then,” Jonas Aidoo said of the loss to Tennessee. “But we’re a completely different team now and I think the best thing is we all know it, so we know what’s the difference between how we played then and now.”
Jackson Fuller covers Arkansas football, basketball and baseball for the Southwest Times Record, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at jfuller@gannett.com or follow him @jacksonfuller16 on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Arkansas basketball had to learn to play physical before run to Sweet 16
