Eric Musselman believes Arkansas played best defense of season vs. Kentucky

It’s been a tough and trying year for the Arkansas basketball team, which dropped to 10-10 on the season with a 63-57 loss to Kentucky on Saturday. The Hogs fell to 1-6 in SEC play.

But there were reasons for optimism in the loss to the Wildcats that coach Eric Musselman was able to point to.

In particular, he felt like the team probably put together its best defensive performance of the season, perhaps something the unit can build on going forward.

“Well I hope so. I thought following the gameplan tonight, I didn’t think we had guys just going off and doing whatever they wanted defensively,” Musselman said. “I thought we were extremely disciplined.”

Arkansas got out to a strong start in the game, leading for the majority of the first two-thirds of the contest. The team ran out of gas a little bit late, but the strong defensive effort gave them a chance.

That’s not to say it was perfect, but it was pretty darned good compared to what the Razorbacks have seen at other times this season.

“I thought there was two plays late in the second half where we got undisciplined and they hit two threes,” Musselman said. “But for sure I’m going to assume it’s our best defensive game of the year. I mean we lost the game, but I think they started off like 1-of-14.”

The Razorbacks opened up an early 10-point lead over the Wildcats but were unable to stretch it further. Kentucky eventually bit into the lead and then took over in the second half of the game.

Still, those positive signs were there for Musselman. Now it’s just a matter of putting it all together at once.

“Our bigs were challenging everything,” he said. “We were running them off the 3-point line. So yeah, it was a good defensive performance and it was not a good offensive performance.”

Arkansas will get a chance to put it all together in one game on Wednesday night against Missouri, one of two league teams that has yet to win a Southeastern Conference game. The game will tip at 8:30 p.m. ET in Columbia, Mo., with a broadcast on the SEC Network.