When It's 45-0 at Half, Pittman Focused on Finishing Season
Some Arkansas fans are still in a full-blown panic after a 45-3 win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Saturday.
Don't be so quick to read that much into it. There never was a plan to do a wholesale lineup change and score points.
"Our goal at halftime was to play all 2’s and 3’s and win the second half and we didn’t do it,” Sam Pittman said later. “We couldn’t move the football with our 2’s and that WAS our 2’s."
Football isn't hockey. There are no wholesale line changes (well, maybe Alabama or Georgia could but nobody else).
Pittman was interested in what was coming up.
The Razorbacks have a bye week, then a four-week run where they are going to need every player they can keep healthy to put together a season nobody seriously expected back in the summer.
"We gotta get healthy next week," Pittman said. "Then we've got to have a great game plan for Mississippi State."
That kicks off a November where after hosting the Bulldogs, the Hogs will go on the road to play an LSU team that is up and down like the winning shortstop in the World Series, then Alabama and closing out against a Missouri team that has found ways to win since 2013.
The Hogs have won one game since the Tigers came into the league and they started playing every year.
"We're exciting about trying to make another run," Pittman said. "Our kids believe we can do that and this game helped us towards that."
A lot of people are holding their breath nothing happens to starting quarterback KJ Jefferson, who had a solid outing Saturday (10-of-17, 4 touchdowns, 194 yards).
Malik Hornsby didn't have much success in second half against UAPB.
Ted McClenning
Malik Hornsby completed just one of five passes in the second half.
The important part there is he only tried five passes, which shows all the Hogs were trying to do was run the ball, not stop the clock or get anybody hurt.
Pittman wanted to evaluate the guys who haven't gotten on the field often through the first eight games of the season.
"When the kid sees himself on tape, all this, ‘Well, I’m as good as somebody, and I’m as good, and I should be doing this.’ Well, okay," Pittman said. "You’ve got a half of football. Let’s see what it looks like.
"And if it looks like what you’ve been saying, well then we’ll give you a few extra reps. If it looks like what we’ve been saying, then we’ve got to get better."
That's his way of saying show me something or shut up and keep working to get better.
But the unspoken part of all that is he wasn't going to run up the score on the Golden Lions. There was not one single advantage in hanging 72 points on an FCS team that is the first in-state matchup since World War II.
Scoring 45 in the first half was enough when UAPB hadn't scored a point.
And losing the second half by 3 points means nothing except to some in the Lunatic Fringe of Hog Nation.
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