Eric Musselman makes baseball joke about Jalen Graham’s free-throw percentage, commends commitment to improvement

Arkansas was almost in a must-win situation, facing off against a Collin Castleton-less Florida team. Head coach Eric Musselman was able to get the job done in impressive fashion, getting a 19-point victory. A lot of the success came through forward Jalen Graham, having one of his best days of the season.

Musselman said getting Graham involved was the gameplan from the beginning, thinking he created a ton of matchup problems. The goal was to get the forward the ball early in the game and ride his success throughout all 40 minutes.

“We were going to go to him early, which is what we did,” Musselman said. “A lot of it was matchups… We just felt like Jalen’s footwork would be a problem for them.”

The overall performance from Graham was a solid one. He finished with a career-high 26 points, making 12 shots on 15 attempts. Add in seven rebounds and Graham was not too far off from adding a double-double to his resume.

However, Musselman took some time to focus on one specific area of Graham’s game. Free throws have been a problem this season for Graham, struggling heavily. Musselman joked if this was Dave Van Horn’s team, Graham’s free throw percentage would be useful.

Improvement came on Saturday though, impressing Musselman.

“He went two for two from the foul line,” Musselman said. “That’s huge because he was batting .333. He had a heck of a batting average at the foul line.”

Graham actually missed one of his free throw attempts, finishing the night two for three from the line. Either way, that’s a major improvement for the forward. Five is the most attempts in a game all season from Graham and has only made multiple three times.

Struggling would be an understatement for Graham. Musselman said he put out a challenge for improvement and against Florida, Graham answered the bell.

“He’s done a great job working,” Musselman said. “I’ve been on him about the free throws pretty hard and I thought he did a pretty good job tonight converting the ones he had.”

If Arkansas is going to have success in the month of March, guys like Graham will need to continue to have solid days. There are definitely stars littered throughout the roster for Musselman such as Anthony Black and Nick Smith Jr. But the best version of the Razorbacks comes when everyone is able to contribute.