Letdown City: Misssissippi State 70, Hogs 56

Pretty horrible watching this game. Like slowly being suffocated. Seemed like MSU couldn’t miss a shot. Every time the Hawgs tried to get something going, something happened: a missed shot a 3-pointed form MSU, points in the paint for MSU, a foul. Something to kill momentum and make the fans sit on their hands.

Very frustrating. NO ONE could hit a shot with any consistency. Washington looked lost and scared. The only positive I could see was that Henry got more quality minutes. That’s about it though. :^(

Oh yeah. Someone commented in a previous article about how atrocious officiating can be on the road in the SEC. Well it was pretty atrocious tonight. If it gets much worse on the road, I don’t see how we’re going to manage many victories out there.

Well, that kind of sucked. A lot of the credit we’d be getting just flew out of the window. Regarding the officiating, I won’t say it was good, but it was a lot better than the officiating from either the Texas or Oklahoma games. One thing was obvious: If we have to play a team that can shoot the 3 reliably, we’re toast. I’m sure this is how Texas felt when playing us.

This loss couldn’t have come at a worse time. It definitely smelled a whole lot like this one the whole time.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=232840008

Ugh. If this team goes 0-3 to start the SEC, the fans may not forgive them for the rest of the season.

I was surprised and disappointed in the razorbacks tonight. I know that they are a really young team and would have nights where they wouldn’t win, but I didn’t think it would be tonight. Yes, I thought it might be a close game, but the hogs would win, base on how they have been playing the last three games and ite was a home game.
The players weren’t hitting their shots and they couldn’t hit the threes or they couldn’t stop MSU from making their threes. But where was the hustle of the hogs defense tonight.
  But as a Razorback fan I didn’t see a team tonight who was playing with passion or heart and a team who was playing to win a ball game. Hopefully, Coach Pelphrey and his coaches can get the team to play with passion,excitement and a team who wants to win ball games, because if Coach Pelphrey and his coaching staff can’t then it is going to be a very long season for the team and as well as their fans.

Here is how I saw the game tonight:
Who played with intensify? MSU Not the Razorbacks
Who played with passion? MSU Not the Razorbacks
Who played to win ? MSU Not the Razorbacks
Who gave 110% of themselves during the ball game? MSU Not the Razorbacks
So that’s why MSU won the ball game tonight and 1-0 in Conference play and Arkansas is 0-1 in Conference play. Now the hogs has their backs against the wall already, going on the road to Ole MS and Florida.
 If the Razorbacks can start playing with intensify, find their passion for winning ball games and give 110 % of themselves like they had done in the OK, TX, and the Mean green games then they might end up with having a respectable season,remember anything is possible in a college ball game.
 But if these things don’t happen then the prediction will happen the hogs will finish last in the West division . This would be disappointing to the Coach Pelphrey and his coach staff, his team and the Arkansas’s fans. Let all hope this don’t happens.

Let’s all take a deep breath and get ready to support these kids on the road.
Ole Miss will be looking for a big home win after they played Florida tough on the road last night.
They are both 0-1 to open conference play, so this is a big one.
If the Hogs play defense against the Rebs like they did against the Bulldogs last night, they’ll be 0-2.

It’s time for a reality check, but this isn’t the way I wanted them to go into conference play.
Hopefully, they’ll turn this thing back around.

A half-pint of Ben and Jerry’s was all that could console me. I hope I don’t have to stock up.

Drew,

State’s inside game really didn’t get going with Varnardo until late in the game.
With all of the 3s we could have been hitting in the mean time, we may have negated a lot of the 3s State was putting in, especially with Washington playing well early, inside.

I don’t nessesarily believe that we’ll be toast when we meet teams that drain the 3 reliably, or at least I hope not.

State may have had a remarkable night shooting from long distance, but something tells me we won’t shoot the ball as bad as we did very often either.

Maybe we can regroup and have a solid outing against the Rebs.

GO HOGS!!!!!

Gonzohog,
What I saw was a tacit inability to defend against a team that has multiple outside scoring threats. When I think back to OK and TX, I remember that both of them really only had one deep shooter a piece (Crocker and Abrams, respectively). Crocker spent most of the game riding pine after picking up 3 fouls, but then came back to really burn us in the second half. Welsh, of course, did a spectacular job of not even letting Abrams have room to breathe. Well, of course if we’re playing perfectly, it’s going to be difficult to beat us. But, as they proved last night, and a little bit during TX, they won’t always play perfectly, and when they don’t, it can get ugly quick. Besides, I think my pessimism is a hold-over defense mechanism from football season. I hope they prove me wrong. But, also, in the back of mind, I remember thinking that the loss to MO State would be a good thing. I have a feeling this early loss will be a good thing too (even if it does mean that we won’t be ranked come Monday).

I wasn’t able to see the game over the weekend. I kept looking on ESPN for the score to roll by, but I think they showed every one textbook college in the country, but not the Arkansas / Miss. State score. I guess ESPN was just trying to keep me from having a bad weekend, haha. So I come into work this morning, and the crying Indian chief said it all. I hope we don’t see too much more of him, but I see where we could in the next two away games. To go from beating Texas and Oklahoma to possibly 0-3 in conference. Ouch. That could make even (who Ken Hatfield once referenced) cry.

apparently one poor showing erases any favor won in the polls by beating teams ranked 4 and 7

If the polls had any validity, what so ever, then I think the Hogs would be ranked, and deserve to be ranked somewhere in bottom portion of the top 25.
Since there not though, I think it says something for the people doing the voting.

Certain people casting votes in the early part of the year always seem to have their mind made up about which teams they like going into the season.
They usually don’t waver much on the teams picked to finish at the bottom of the heap at the beginning.

In so many words, it’s nice to see your team ranked, but anymore, it really doesn’t mean much.

Gonzo’s right. I never look at the polls in basketball anymore. What you need are wins, wins, wins. Do that and the rest will sort itself out.

Like what I’m hearing on Mississippi’s woes at point. If this team will come with energy, toughness, and ball smarts, the Hawgs will walk out of there with a win.

I’m not surprised we’re not ranked, and I don’t think we deserve to be. Against MSU, we didn’t look like one of the top 25 teams in the country, regardless of the fact that we beat OK and TX. Winning those two games doesn’t entitle us to anything, especially if we can’t back it up in the weaker-than-usual SEC. To their credit, we are somewhere around 26-28, which is probably right where we belong until we can learn to take care of business. Although, as far as the polls go, they are at least more meaningful than the football polls (which have become increasingly meaningless).