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Darius Acuff Jr. Turns Quiet Night into Razorbacks' Win Over LSU

Freshman guard erupted for 31 points after halftime, lifting Arkansas past Tigers and showing why the freshman keeps changing games.
Andy Hodges|
Arkansas Razorbacks guard Darius Acuff Jr. during game against the LSU Tigers at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville, Ark.
Arkansas Razorbacks guard Darius Acuff Jr. during game against the LSU Tigers at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville, Ark. | Arkansas Communications

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Arkansas Razorbacks

There’s a certain quiet panic that creeps into Bud Walton Arena when things don’t look right early.

The ball sticks. and legs look heavy. The scoreboard doesn’t cooperate. On Saturday night, Arkansas basketball flirted with that feeling again.

Then Darius Acuff Jr. decided he’d had enough of that mess.

By halftime, the Arkansas freshman guard looked like just another name in the box score. Seven points. One rebound. An assist. One turnover. Fifteen minutes. Nothing that made anyone reach for the record book.

By the end of the night, he had 31 points, six assists, two blocks, two rebounds and the Razorbacks had an 85-81 win over LSU that didn’t feel possible earlier.

Sometimes college basketball is complicated. Sometimes it’s a freshman deciding he’s done waiting.

Acuff exploded in the second half, becoming the first Arkansas freshman to score 31 points in a game since Isaiah Joe did it back in 2018.

He didn’t just score. He ran the game. For a long stretch, the Hogs didn’t have an offense so much as they had Acuff.

From the 9:26 mark of the second half to 4:12 remaining, Acuff either scored or assisted on 23 straight Arkansas points. That streak only stopped because Meleek Thomas grabbed his own miss and cleaned it up.

Otherwise, Acuff was involved in everything that mattered. To him it didn't appear later to be that big of a deal.

“Nothing changed,” Acuff said. “We just knew we came out a little slow the first half, so we had to bounce back in the second half. We knew what we needed to do to win. So, I feel like we just did that and came out with the win.”

That’s the thing about freshmen who don’t panic. They never think anything changed. Everyone else in the building can feel the swing coming, but they just keep playing.

The Hogs needed it, too, because the first half was another reminder of Arkansas’ strange split personality in SEC play. LSU walked into the locker room with a 37-33 lead despite missing all eight of its three-point attempts.

The Tigers didn’t need jump shots. They lived in the paint and lived on second chances.

LSU scored 24 points in the paint in the first half. They pulled down eight offensive rebounds and turned them into 13 second-chance points. Arkansas looked a step slow and a decision late, which has been a theme more than anyone around Fayetteville wants to admit.

Then the second half started, and LSU hit two three-pointers right away, which felt rude given how the first half went. The Tigers stretched the lead to eight points, and that familiar Bud Walton murmur started to roll through the building.

That’s when Acuff went to work.

He attacked gaps. He created angles. He found teammates when defenders leaned too hard. He scored when they didn’t. It wasn’t flashy. It was just relentless.

The Hogs chipped away while also fighting the same Jekyll-and-Hyde tendencies that have followed them through conference play.

Trevon Brazile said that was the message from the bench.

“Just us sticking with who we are all the time,” Brazile said. “Not taking even one possession off, not in a game we can’t take one possession off, so we just got to be more consistent than that and we’re going to keep trying to fix it.”

Consistency has been Arkansas’ loudest quiet problem. When the Hogs lock in, they look like a team nobody wants to play. When they drift, things get uncomfortable fast.

Saturday lived in that uncomfortable space until Acuff made sure it didn’t.

The moment that broke LSU’s back came late. With 49 seconds left, Brazile drilled a three from the wing to push Arkansas’ lead to two possessions. It wasn’t a lucky bounce or a broken play. It was a read.

And yes, Acuff made it.

“(Brazile) told me right when we went to the timeout, two (LSU players) had went with me the play before, and I think I turned it over,” Acuff said. “He was wide open, so once I saw him do that again, I just hit him. I knew he was going to make it.”

That’s trust, and that’s a freshman playing like someone who’s been around awhile.

By now, Acuff isn’t sneaking up on anyone. He’s stacking stat lines that look familiar to longtime Razorback fans. He’s doing things that get whispered about in draft rooms. He’s becoming the next guard in a long line that tends to leave campus earlier than planned.

John Calipari didn’t try to dance around it.

“If anybody watching this game doesn’t say, ‘Well he’s one of those guys,’ I don’t know what to tell you,” Calipari said. “He is.”

The Hogs still have work to do. They can’t keep spotting teams leads. They can’t keep relying on one player to fix everything. But on a night when Arkansas needed steadiness more than fireworks, a freshman guard delivered both.

And he did it without changing a thing, at least in his own mind.

Sometimes that’s how it goes. The calmest guy in the gym ends up being the loudest reason you win.

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Andy Hodges
ANDY HODGES

Sports columnist, writer, former radio host and television host who has been expressing an opinion on sports in the media for over four decades. He has been at numerous media stops in Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi.

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