Arkansas Spanks #2 Florida!

[Quillback]

Probably a fluke win, but it was good to see them beat a quality team for once.

[OzarksRiverman]

Hell yeah! Huge confidence boost for a team that really needed it. Now we'll see if they can build on the win when they go out on the road.

Go Hogs!

[Quillback]

Sheesh, they go on the road and lose to Vandy? What the heck??

[ozark trout fisher]

SEC road wins are tough to come by. Missouri fans know this.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how Mizzou does at Bud Walton next Saturday. That will be a pretty good measuring stick for both teams...Arkansas will come out fighting because they know they probably need all the quality wins they can get to have a chance to make the tournament at this point. Missouri should see it as an important game to make a statement on the road, and to avoid falling too far down in seeding, or even to avoid getting too close to the bubble. Should be a very tough game. Now in Mizzou arena on the other hand, could be a lot more manageable.

Except in the one dream season where we made the Elite Eight, Mike Anderson could almost never win on the road at Missouri. Always dang near unbeatable at home though, even when our teams were not that good. I think his 40 minutes of heck system relies a little too much on the energy of the home crowd, and the home refs. I'm not exactly shocked to see the same thing play out at Arkansas.

[Quillback]

Yep, I'm looking forward to that Mizzou game in Fayetteville. Important game for both teams.

I understand it's tough on the road in the SEC, but to get blown out by Vandy is unacceptable to me. I can see a close loss, but that was ridiculous. I really am starting to wonder about Anderson's ability to motivate his players.

[OzarksRiverman]

Anderson's only had ONE recruiting class. His first year, the "Big 4" were all but forced onto him and into his system. I like Qualls, Williams, and Clarke, but all are very young. I'm holding my judgement until after next year--when he's bringing in a top ten recruiting class.

[ozark trout fisher]

Obviously as someone who cheers for Mizzou, I'm not a huge Mike Anderson fan, so if he ends up losing his job because of a couple of subpar seasons it wouldn't be all that heartbreaking for me. But realistically, I would encourage patience. It took him two straight years of not being anywhere close to the NCAA tournament before he was able to get things going. At least this Arkansas team is making at least something of a push towards postseason play.

Mike Anderson will probably never build your program into one that is consistently one of the top 2 in the SEC. His brand of basketball lends itself to an incredible amount of inconsistency-always the case when you rely on a bunch of turnovers to win...against teams that can handle the ball you'll almost never win. And while I know he's had his moments at Mizzou and UAB, generally it's a terrible system for making a run in the tournament, where the games tend to be slowed down a lot and half court offense (and defense) is a necessary skill. But his system gets into the heads of more teams than not, especially at home. I would expect him to get Arkansas to the tournament more often than not, if that's the goal.

[stlfisher]

The one thing about Anderson's teams is when the system is working It looks great and they can run you out of the gym pretty quick(think Mizzou over Memphis a few years ago). But man when it is not working it can be kind of painful to watch.

I think Mizzou could really struggle at Arkansas. It is not really a good matchup IMO. We have one guy that can handle the ball.IT will all come down to how Pressey handles the pressure and if he can keep it up for 40 minutes. This is the game in which we will really miss Dixon.

[ozark trout fisher]

I think on the road we could lose by double digits, easy. I could also see us winning by 20+ at home. Hopefully we will actually be able to handle the ball. If Keion Bell can be a servicable secondary ball-handler like he was against Ole Miss, we can probably beat Arkansas at home on the road, no matter how well they play. Because they almost certainly can't beat us without a lot of turnovers-unless they're hitting a ridiculous number of threes. But my level of confidence in that actually happening isn't great.

I'll say Arkansas wins by 12-15 in Fayetteville, honestly. If I'm right that puts a lot of pressure on this team to win pretty much every game except Kentucky and Florida the rest of the way. Probably pretty doable considering the schedule but Mizzou would be well served to quit playing with fire and just go get the win. Easier said than done. Arkansas is clearly a talented and dangerous team, the sort that if they can get in as an 11 or 12 seed no 5 or 6 seed would want to face. Arkansas' gonna know that they really need to beat Missouri to have a chance to get there. Desperate team that plays very well at home against a team that struggles on the road? Not the greatest combination ever.

[OzarksRiverman]

The success of Mike Anderson's style of play is predicated on recruiting great athletes. Nolan Richardson had the ability to find and recruit that type of athleticism, and so far in his career Anderson has been able to follow his mentor's blueprint.

They had/have a knack for finding the right type of athletes to be the pieces to a puzzle.

I wish Arkansas had a J.T. Spiller right about now.