By PAUL GOTHAM
BUFFALO — Arkansas senior guard Au’Diese Toney patterns his efforts on the defensive end of the floor after the Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler.
On Saturday night, Toney channeled his inner Game 5 of the 2020 NBA Finals.
Tasked with the assignment of covering New Mexico State’s Teddy Allen, Toney held the Aggies’ leading scorer nearly eight points under his season average, and the fourth-seeded Razorbacks went on to clinch a spot in the 2022 NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen with a 53-48 victory at the KeyBank Center.
“From a defensive standpoint, obviously Au’Diese Toney, the way that he played individually tonight was as good as any defender that I’ve ever coached,” Arkansas head man Eric Musselman commented. “Collectively the team being able to adjust in a short turnaround and be able to switch timeout after timeout into different coverages, we played almost the whole first half in our spy coverage. The guys just did an incredible job.”
On Thursday night, Allen broke the arena single-game scoring mark for NCAA Tournament games with 37 points. After missing his first six shots of the night, Allen finished 10-of-24 from the floor and 13-of-13 from the free throw line as the 12th-seeded Aggies toppled No. 5 UConn, 70-63.
On Saturday night, Allen hit his first shot on the Aggies’ opening possession but only connected once more for the remainder of the first half.
“He is a very good competitor, and he stayed moving without the ball, and finding ways to get the ball,” Toney said of the New Mexico State star. “It’s just hard, but we just had to switch the defense. At the timeout, it was just to maintain him not getting the ball.”
Allen’s first field goal of the second half came with less than five minutes remaining in the game.
“A couple of possessions later on in second half, he started getting a little frustrated, and that was my key then to just keep doing what I was doing,” Toney explained. “A couple of possessions, the last game he had, when he had 37, he was aggressive. He just wanted the ball more, and this game he really didn’t seem like he wanted the ball as much, so I just kept trying to be locked in on that.”
“They just doubled basically,” Allen said. “Pretty much whenever I had a ball and any type of attacking position, you know, credit to them. They had a good game plan. We just — we still could have executed, but sometimes it doesn’t work out.”
The 48 points was a season low for the Aggies which came into the tournament averaging 73.3 points per game.
“They did a good job,” New Mexico State head coach Chris Jans said of the Razorbacks. “I needed to help our team more in the first half especially to put them in better positions. We were out of rhythm. We weren’t in a rhythm. Teddy struggled early obviously. We rely on him at times to get us out of funks sometimes, but, again, we stuck together.”
In the end, it was Toney’s effort at the front of the defense against Allen.
“It’s a little bit how we used to play Kobe Bryant,” Musselman said referring to his experience coaching for nine seasons in the NBA. “I didn’t know if we were giving him too much, meaning the entire team. I was worried about it today at the team meal even as late as 4:00. Did we try to squeeze too much in? When you demand a lot, it’s amazing what people can retain.
“He (Toney) is a guy sometimes that I want him to rest a little bit offensively because of the energy, and tonight’s scheme was a little bit more complicated than we’ve had when you are changing stuff during timeouts on which way you’re forcing a guy and which way the help is coming from.”
JD Notae paced an Arkansas offense which shot just 27.5 percent (14-for-51) for the game. Despite playing with foul trouble and picking his fifth infraction with 1:22 remaining in the game, the 6-foot-2 senior guard finished with 18 points including 7-of-8 from the free throw line to go with a game-high eight steals.
“I’ll put a lot of that on me maybe offensively because we spent the entire — and it was really short turnaround, but I probably spent too much time defensively on what we were going to do and maybe didn’t spend enough time offensively and tweaking some of our offensive sets,” Musselman stated. “I did think that we missed some easy baskets around the rim. That was a little bit uncharacteristic of us.”
The Razorbacks finished the game a collective 22-of-25 from the charity for a 16-point advantage in the category over their counterparts.
Jaylin Williams converted a pair from the line for a 34-33 Arkansas lead that the Razorbacks did not surrender with 7:55 remaining in the game. Williams finished with 10 points and 15 rebounds.
Three charity tosses from Chris Lykes pushed the Arkansas advantage to 44-36.
New Mexico State cut the deficit to two at 48-46 on a Sir’Jabari Rice corner 3-pointer with 11.9 seconds left in the game.
Johnny McCants led the Aggies with with 16 points and 12 rebounds. The senior forward’s and-one with 8:06 remaining in the game gave NMSU its only lead of the second half at 33-32. McCants scored 13 in the second half. He finished and upfake and drive from outside the arc with a thunderous one-handed slam that brought the New Mexico State faithful to its feet.
“We fully expected them to run at Teddy from the scouting that we did and the talking that we did to teams in their league that know them better, and we weren’t surprised by it at all,” Jans explained. “Probably should have gone inside a little bit more in the first half. Certainly in the second half, we wanted to establish ourselves down there a little bit more with Johnny and Will (McNair). We got some easier baskets and kind of opened up the floor a little bit for us the rest of the half.”
“New Mexico State is really well-coached,” Musselman said. “They’re really tough. They pride themselves on offensive rebounds, and they pride themselves on getting loose balls. They pride themselves on toughness. You know, we pride ourselves on toughness too. We just — maybe some people overlook that part of us, but we feel like from a toughness standpoint that we can go toe to toe.”
Arkansas will play No. 1 seed Gonzaga in next weekend’s regional semi-final. Last season, the Razorbacks lost to eventual champion Baylor in the regional final.
“We grind so hard in the offseason, and we don’t take our summers lightly,” Musselman stated. “I mean, we have a goal that when school starts for the regular school that we have everything in that we need to have in, meaning, you know, all of our baseline package zone offense. We’re squeezing it all in in a limited amount of time, but we don’t just come in and just shoot.
“I mean, it’s a culture of work. It’s a culture of trying to get maximum effort every day, but to make two Sweet 16s back-to-back, it’s not easy. There’s very few teams that are able to do it.”
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