Back Half of SEC Play Gives Razorbacks Plenty of Revenge Chances

Hogs have little left than to avoid rough Pelphrey-era stat,, but things are just that bad

Author:
Daniel Shi
Updated:
Feb 14, 2024 2:17 PM EST
Original:
Feb 11, 2024

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — With the chances of an at-large bid to March Madness all but dead, (TeamRankings gives Arkansas a 1% chance at getting into the Big Dance), the Razorbacks have little to play for other than pride after Georgia beat the Razorbacks, 76-66, in Athens earlier in the season. The Hogs used that to great effect in a 78-75 win over the Bulldogs in the rematch.

"It was a theme all week," guard El Ellis said postgame. "Get this win back. In Athens, we should have got that game. We came out ready to play. We played together and moved the ball. That’s a good way to start the second half of conference play."

Well, if there's any silver lining to starting 2-7 in conference play, there will be plenty more chances to do just that, a payback game of sorts. Such are the motivations for a team that was once ranked in the Top 15 to begin the season and played themselves out of tournament contention really before February even began.

Razorbacks' El Ellis with a layup against Georgia

"That’s what we had in the back of our head the whole time," Tramon Mark said. "The whole week in practice, just trying to get that win [against Georgia] back.

Arkansas now has two more chances to avenge rather embarrassing losses of different kinds. The Razorbacks make the return trip to Lexington March 2 after the Hogs were unable to capitalize on Kentucky's poor shooting to start the game (1-for-17 from the floor) as the Wildcats slowly worked their way back to a 63-57 win.

LSU comes to Bud Walton on March 9 after boat-racing Arkansas in its home gym, shooting 54.7% from the floor, including 52.2% from deep en route to a 95-74 blowout.

The Razorbacks also have three SEC wins and need two more to break free of tying a Hog record of 14 conference losses. The conference schedule now has 18 games instead of 16 when the 2009 John Pelphrey team went 2-14. On the 15th anniversary of a lost season, the Razorbacks will once again look to avoid joining the record books in a bad way.

Not one soul within a 50-mile radius of Fayetteville would have predicted that this would be the post-mortem on the first half of SEC play, but here we are, hanging on to pride, but hey, a journey of a million miles starts with a single step.

If revenge is finally what get the team to defend the three better, then maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is still that 1% out there for the eternal sunshine pumpers, but for the rest of us, baseball starts in less than a week.

The Hogs do have a chance to claim a massive scalp against No. 6 Tennessee at 8 p.m. Feb. 14 inside Bud Walton. The game willl be broadcast on ESPN2 and fuboTV .