FAYETTEVILLE — By any means necessary, Arkansas basketball had to come away from Wednesday’s home tilt against Georgia with a victory. The Razorbacks entered the night winless in the SEC, low on belief and dealing with the reality that starting point guard Boogie Fland could miss the rest of the season with a thumb injury.
The message from the coaching staff was to ‘grit one out’, and that’s exactly what Arkansas (12-7, 1-5 SEC) did in a 68-65 victory over the Bulldogs (14-5, 2-4).
The Hogs crashed the glass with 18 offensive rebounds, relentlessly got to the free-throw line and overcame a 15-point deficit in the second half to knock off Georgia. Adou Thiero’s free throw with 1.8 seconds remaining was the difference, and Thiero’s trip to the charity stripe was the result of his fourth offensive rebound of the night.
“We needed to get off the snide when Boogie went down. Everybody was saying, ‘They may not win a game.’ Well, that was wrong. Now let’s see what we can do and where we can go from there,” coach John Calipari said.
More: Arkansas basketball turns weakness into strength, beats Georgia for first SEC win
More: Adou Thiero’s late free throw pushes Arkansas basketball past Georgia.
It was a needed win, but it hardly felt like a turning point for the season, mainly because Fland’s absence cratered the shooting and creativity of an already struggling offense.
Second-chance points and free throws were the only bright spots for the Arkansas offense. The Hogs were 3 of 23 on 3-pointers and shot 31% from the field, which represented their worst shooting performance of the season.
A team that was averaging 15.3 assists per game finished with six against Georgia, and half of those assists came off fast breaks. D.J. Wagner had three dimes, with Thiero and Johnell Davis combining for the other three assists.
“We practiced without (Fland), so just doing different lineups in practice, we already got great chemistry,” Karter Knox said. “With (Fland) being out, which is a big part of our offense, probably if he was in the game, we would have blown them out, but we just had to adjust.”
The Razorbacks’ best offense Wednesday was rebounding their own misses.
Georgia ranks 12th in the conference giving up 11.4 offensive rebounds per game, and Arkansas exposed that matchup. It can be an effective long-term strategy. Tennessee and Florida use it to great success, and Calipari sounded determined in his postgame news conference to make offensive rebounding a bigger focus in the weeks ahead.
But Arkansas doesn’t have the front court depth of Tennessee and Florida to rely on second-chance points every night. The Razorbacks need the offense to improve in the half court. Is that possible without Fland?
Thiero is becoming a reliable scorer and will have to take his game to the next level. He had 17 points and 11 rebounds and was the only Arkansas player to make more than three field goals against Georgia. Knox had the best game of his career, but 11 of his 13 points came from the free-throw line.
Johnell Davis represents an obvious source of potential. He averaged 18.2 points on 13 shot attempts last year at FAU. Those numbers are down to 8.4 and 7.6 with the Hogs, but Davis took 14 shots against the Bulldogs. He only made three and finished with nine points, but Calipari liked his aggression.
With Fland out, there are more shots to go around, and there should be less anxiety on the eight members of Calipari’s rotation. There’s no room for a short leash, and the Hogs have no other option but to trust the shots will start falling.
If they do, and the rebounding efforts of Wednesday night become consistent, perhaps this win can be the start of an unforeseen turnaround.
“It feels good to finally get a W in SEC play,” Thiero said. “We struggled the first couple weeks on the court and off the court. We’d get on the court and then we’d start feeling the pressure. Guys had to feel pressure off the court, too. Just shutting everything out, staying as one, that really helped. We went out there and played together tonight.”
This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: How Arkansas basketball’s offense changed without starting PG Boogie Fland
