KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Perhaps it was in honor of Thanksgiving, but Arkansas basketball started its holiday clash with Illinois looking as if it consumed too many plates of dessert.
The No. 21 Razorbacks (5-2) came out sluggish and off-kilter in a 90-77 loss to Illinois Thursday. The Illini (6-1) opened on an 11-0 run and led 23-8 through the first 7:47 of action. Arkansas would go on to outscore Illinois the rest of the game, but it wasn’t enough in a disappointing loss to a quality opponent.
“First seven minutes of the game was (the difference),” John Calipari said. “And the issues, again, you have to give Illinois credit. They came in and they literally played to win the game. We kind of went in to try to show my stuff, and I don’t mean that negatively; it just takes time to get guys to buy in to how we’re going to have to do this to win.”
Arkansas is clearly still learning on the fly, but the one thing that was unacceptable to Calipari on Thursday was his team’s lack of aggression.
Three of the Hogs’ first six shots came from behind the arc. Calipari wants his team to shoot threes, and the 30-point disparity from long range played a critical role in the loss, but the game plan was to attack the basket.
The success of that strategy showed itself after the opening minutes, especially through Adou Thiero, who finished with 26 points and was relentless in his efforts to get to the rim. He took 21 free throws but only making 12 contributed to the Hogs’ loss.
“A beast on both ends. Just showing, we’ve got to feed off his energy. We’ve got to match his intensity,” Arkansas guard Johnell Davis said of Thiero.
The lack of aggression started on defense. Arkansas entered the game forcing 17.7 turnovers per game, but Illinois took care of the ball and dished out 16 assists with just 11 giveaways.
And according to Calipari, his team lost its head a bit defending the outside shot. Assistant coach Chin Coleman said Wednesday night that the goal was to hold Illinois to about 20 3-point attempts. The Illini finished 15-of-31 in the category, while Arkansas went 5-of-17.
“We worked on taking away three; we didn’t do a very good job, did we? We left corners. We don’t ever leave corners. I mean, literally, left corners, and they made them,” Calipari said.
Still, the Arkansas head coach remains confident. He later said in his postgame news conference that he can envision a high ceiling for this team when everything clicks. The Hogs haven’t practiced this season with Trevon Brazile and Jonas Aidoo, and the latter made his return from injury Thursday.
Unfortunately, the Razorbacks are running out of opportunities for quality non-conference wins and are 0-2 against Power Four opposition. The switch needs to be flipped soon.
“The whole thing is getting them to play right,” Calipari said. “You may play right and lose, but you can walk away and say, ‘All right, we knew what we were doing. We went after it the way we wanted to. They make some shots that were tough shots.’ That’s fine. That’s totally different than this. They took it to us and they were the aggressor the whole game.”
