By PAUL GOTHAM
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Arkansas head coach Eric Mussleman wondered if a college team could execute a game plan he once used in the NBA.
Facing New Mexico State in Saturday’s second round game, the third-year head coach put together a defensive scheme worthy of a hall-of-famer.
And his Razorbacks held their opponent to a season-low output and clinched a second straight trip to the Sweet Sixteen.
“Tonight’s scheme was a little bit more complicated than we’ve had,” Musselman said after Arkansas defeated New Mexico State, 53-48 in West Region action from the KeyBank Center. “When you are changing stuff during time-outs on which way you’re forcing a guy and which way the help is coming from.”
Musselman’s squad made Teddy “Buckets” Allen its first priority, but the Razorbacks didn’t ignore other contributors to the Aggies’ offense.
“We had a primary defensive package for number 0, Teddy Allen, and then we had a secondary package for (Sir’Jabari) Rice, number 10,” Musselman said of the Aggies’ leading scorer and point guard. “We wanted to pressure him, and we wanted to bother him. We wanted to stab at the ball.”
Davonte Davis and J.D. Notae shared the responsibility of defending Rice. Notae finished with a game-high eight steals.
Au’Diese Toney held Allen, who was coming of a 37-point performance in the Aggies 70-63 win over No. 5 UConn in round one, nearly eight points under his season average.
“The types of shots that he hit, you know, some of them were unguardable,” UConn head coach Dan Hurley said after Allen broke the arena’s single-game scoring mark for NCAA Tournament contests. “I don’t think we’ve seen a guy take the type of shots he took during the course of the season or seasons.”
Allen’s unconventional nature was something that Musselman felt required the focus of all five players on the court.
“It’s a little bit how we used to play Kobe Bryant.” Musselman said referring to the late hall-of-famer whom he faced during his nine years of experience on the NBA sidelines including three as a head coach. “You know, that philosophy is maybe forcing him right for a quarter and then forcing him left for a quarter, bringing an extra defender, which you saw tonight we did a lot, and then when you bring the extra defender, sometimes on the catch, sometimes on the second dribble.”
Allen, who missed his first six shots on Thursday before connecting on 10-of-18 for the remainder of the game, didn’t hit his third field goal of the night on Saturday until less five minutes remained in the game.
“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.”
Soon after the No. 4 Razorbacks’ first-round game with No.13 Vermont ended, Musselman went into action.
“When we knew we were playing them after our game, I went back and I still have all my notes in my email so, I opened up my emails and went through my post-game notes, and I thought we did a pretty good job except for maybe one or two games against Bryant,” he said. “There’s a huge benefit, to be honest with you, with coaching in the NBA because there’s 82 games, and you have to — every night — I can tell you what we did with Allen Iverson. It might not have worked every night because my record should have been better. I wouldn’t have gotten fired so much. I still got the experience of trying to — even as an assistant coach for my dad and game planning against Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar). I’ve seen every position, a great player, and been a part of a game plan.”
Putting all that into place in less than 48 hours concerned the Ashland, Ohio native.
“We were worried about giving them too much in a short amount of time, but I mean, these guys play so hard. It was obviously not a cosmetically pleasing offensive game, but the toughness and the resilience and the way that we played defense is incredible.
“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.”
Arkansas held NMSU nearly 26 points under its season average of 73.3 points per game. The Aggies came into the game shooting 45.8 percent from the floor and hit 18 of 53 shots (34 percent) on Saturday.
The defensive emphasis did come at the expense of the offense, though. Arkansas, which came into the game shooting 44 percent from the floor, hit just 14 of 51 (27.5 percent) field-goal attempts for the game. The two teams combined for a 13-possession sequence midway through the second half where neither side found the bottom of the net.
“I’m glad I still have a job, after that offensive performance,” Musselman quipped. “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.
“You know, normally we front the post, and they hurt us in the second half going inside, but we felt like if we could hold Allen, the goal was ten or under, and he got two over that. But we felt like if we could just focus on that one aspect, that would afford us an opportunity to win.”
Arkansas will face No. 1 seed Gonzaga in the Sweet 16. A 7:09 p.m. tipoff is scheduled on Thursday.
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