Pittman Has to Believe in His Gut, Convince Players They Can Win at Bama
Sam Pittman said it last year when Arkansas thought it was going to be playing a bowl game against TCU.
Now the Razorbacks have proven it on the field.
The Hogs' 3-7 record in a wacky pandemic season would have been six or seven wins in a normal year is basically what Pittman said.
This year, throw out the four non-conference wins and it's a 3-3 league record with two games left to play. Remember, all 10 last year were SEC games.
Now we know Texas was over-rated. It's the Longhorns, so that's normal (they lost to Kansas over the weekend, by the way, and are on a five-game losing streak). The others really never mattered.
The SEC threw Georgia and Florida on the Hogs last year as fill-ins for half of the non-conference games that were cancelled. Not playing those would have left the record at 3-5.
Don't start talking about "almost" because that is impossible to measure. "Almost" doesn't matter. The record could have been better.
Pittman knows what he's facing in these final two games. Many of the fans are fairly confident it's going to be a 1-1 finish to the season .
The fact is Alabama may be in the getable category this year. Courtesy nod of unregistered trademark phrase there from Ruscin & Zach on ESPN Arkansas.
Either the Crimson Tide have slipped or the rest of the league is starting to catch up or it may be a combination of both.
Missouri may not be the pushover everybody thinks, but since the Hogs have stopped a lot of streaks this year there's no reason to think figuring out the Tigers can't be added to that list.
But measuring improvement is an on-going process for everyone.
The Hogs are 7-3 with two left to play after beating LSU in overtime on Saturday.
Losing both of the remaining games would not show much real improvement and you'd be lying to yourself to think otherwise.
All it would do is equal last season. Fans like to think any year that includes a win over Texas is improvement but all that really matters is what happens in the SEC.
It will be interesting to hear what Pittman has to say about Alabama and it will probably be about how the Hogs are going down to Tuscaloosa to get a win.
Talk is one thing.
You can go all the way back to Bobby Petrino admitting in 2009 even HE didn't think the Hogs could beat Alabama. That changed in 2010 and they almost won in that wild game at Razorback Stadium.
Pittman better believe in his gut the Hogs can get their first win over the Crimson Tide since 2006. And get the players to believe it, too.
Otherwise this team hasn't got a chance in Tuscaloosa
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