Just About Everything with Hogs May Be at Crossroads Now

Raised expectations better get big results or nobody is really happy

Author:
Andy Hodges
Publish date:
Jan 30, 2023 12:51 PM EST

In this story:

Arkansas Razorbacks

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — It was expected about a month ago that 2023 was going to be a big year for Arkansas athletics.

All is not lost, yet.

But for men's and women's basketball teams coming out with new, talented rosters it hasn't worked out that way through January.

As we get ready to close out the first month of the year, we may be looking at a year at the crossroads for just about everybody. It certainly is right now for basketball.

The Razorbacks have a home matchup scheduled for Tuesday night against Texas A&M, who is suddenly thrust itself into the overall league race just by continuing to win games.

"I’ve never had a season like this at all since I’ve been coaching and I’ve been coaching a long time," Eric Musselman said Saturday after an agonizingly close loss at Baylor.

The women are looking to end a four-game slide after everything crashed in an overtime loss at Bud Walton Arena against Ole Miss on Sunday evening.

"Some of our behavior probably needs to start lining up with our expectations," Mike Neighbors said after that one, which simply meant they need to start working more on what that want to do.

Without mentioning a single name (Neighbors doesn't do that), somebody watched just 11 minutes of game film before the Rebels' game and that isn't going to cut it if they want to meet the high expectations many folks had.

Key injuries to Nick Smith Jr. and Trevon Brazile de-railed the Hogs before the new year. It got everything out of whack for a young team that hasn't been able to overcome the confusion.

"We have a group of guys that are in uniform that are just playing through injuries," Musselman said.

Brazile's injury happened in a game and required surgery. There are wild rumors about Smith every day. Whether he takes that the name, image and likeness money to prepare for the NBA or is actually injured won't be known for awhile.

The result is the Hogs face a crossroads in this season with 10 games left on the schedule and only five of them at Bud Walton Arena.

The task may be more daunting for Neighbors' team. They have seven games left.

"We still have a lot to play for," he said Sunday evening.

They need wins.

While basketball is dealing with those issues, football is definitely coming up on a season with more questions than answers available right now.

Hogs coach Sam Pittman probably can't have another 6-6 season without the flames starting to rise. Right now, that's not a bad number, but spring practice will probably change a lot of that.

There is baseball coming up in just a few weeks.

Right now they are in everybody's Top 10, but there are four or five teams in the league ranked ahead of them right now.

Everything is at the crossroads right now.

As Lou Holtz told a group of us in 1977, "things get better or they get worse, but nothing stays the same."

Check back to find out whether that ends up being good news or bad news.