Staying Focused One Game at Time Not for Hogs' Fans

With Razorbacks projected to tournament, Eric Musselman tying to keep players locked in;

Author:
Andy Hodges
Publish date:
Feb 19, 2023 10:12 PM EST

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas doesn't have much time to prepare for Georgia and it shouldn't take long.

Even in the short Saturday-Tuesday turnaround as opposed to playing on a Wednesday.

"When you eliminate the travel it's better," Razorbacks coach Eric Musselman said after a big win over Florida on Saturday. "These guys are so used to playing AAU games where they're playing five games in a day."

Some of us have wondered the same thing about college players for years, especially for the Hogs these days. They don't have physical practices under Musselman.

Now the hope is they can match everything they did against the Gators last weekend the rest of the way, where they don't have a lot of margin for error and somehow are listed in most folks bracketology as being in the tournament.

"The goal is to make it to the tournament," Jalen Graham said after he went for a career-high 26 points against Florida. "We needed this win. We got the win. There are four more games that we need to get wins in."

The Hogs put it all together in that win over the Gators. They've done that before this season, only to see it fall apart in a game or two.

"We were flying around," Musselman said. "We were diving on the floor, getting loose balls, the guys were having fun and they were competing.

"It was really important, and now the level of maturity coming back and understanding how well Georgia has played and how improved they are."

All of the speculation will take care of itself. Musselman has worked on them tuning out all the noise. He's tried to preach taking things one game at a time and we'll see how that plays out down the stretch.

"You’ve got to only focus on us," he said Saturday. "You can’t listen to anything else. It’s about how we respond to certain things. There’s no doubt we’ve been a really good team at home."

They get two of the four left at home, but that last game of the year against Kentucky may be for seeding in the NCAA Tournament. The road games are at Alabama and Tennessee, so winning at home is going to be unbelievably important.

"This game is behind us," Musselman said. "Now you’ve got to focus on the next game on your schedule."

That's for the players.

Most of the fans won't because, well, that's just the way they are.