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I don't know that the Razorbacks are way ahead of where they were last year. And a lot of the success and progress they've made over the past couple of seasons has had a lot more to do with Ronnie Brewer than Stan Heath. Of course, I guess maybe you can credit Stan with getting him in the fold ... but it shouldn't take a miracle worker to recruit the legacy kid from across the street.
The problems with Stan lie a lot deeper than win totals. In games he consistently gets outcoached, it's just that sometimes his team's talent is enough to overcome it. He doesn't seem very adaptive, and doesn't really appear to instill any sort of character or sense of urgency or fire into his guys. As the adage goes, teams often take the personality of their coach. That's not good in this case. Ol' Standstill Stan the Stoic Man over there just looks confused or in a daze all too often.
A few nights ago they got a win, against a bad team, but a win no less. String some of those together and you're on your way to "progress". But there were several things that happened in that game against a bad Central Michigan team that were of concern ... because they happen with regularity. Everybody is afforded an off night here and there, but when you see the same things over and over, it shows weaknesses in the coach's planning.
Just a few things:
*The empty seats. Actual attendance for the CMU game – 8,316. That's disgraceful. The paid attendance was only 14,732 which is also not acceptable. You're nowhere near capacity and your paid no-shows are nearly 1:1 with those who turned out. Maybe everybody stayed home to see Jimmy Dykes and Bill Doleman on ARSN.
That shows a lack of interest in the program. And yes, you can attribute some of that to it being a poor opponent, it being 'football season' still and whatever, but I know that, when the program was where it should be (and not necessarily even at its absolute apex), you didn't see that many empty seats even in a blizzard. So it was Central Michigan, a no-name opponent, yet folks like UConn can still get 14,000 for Central Arkansas (who is more unknown in Connecticut than Central Michigan is in Arkansas) in a game not even on campus in their true home arena.
*The offense is absolutely painful to watch. Early in the game they were running a set with zero screening and the only big, Darian Townes, was far away from the basket – leaving nobody in to board. That might be okay if maybe somebody slashed to the basket, but all they got out of it was an errant, off-balance mid-range jumper. With nobody to rebound, that was an easy win for CMU on that possession.
It took until the 16:32 mark for Arkansas to get its first bucket, and that only happened because the play broke down when a CMU defender broke up a pass and it got slapped around on the floor and Arkansas scrambled around and got an easy basket by Charles Thomas under the goal.
The Hogs' second basket wasn't because of any offensive execution by Arkansas, but because of incompetence by CMU. Three guys jumped up to rebound it, uncontested, and they all managed to just miss it. It came off long to Thomas, who had an easy 8-10 footer with nobody on him since they were all under the basket recovering from their jump.
The first time Arkansas scored out of a set was 5 minutes into the game. Townes was on the left block and drew an ill-advised double team, which allowed Thomas to slip down to the right block, Townes recognized it and got him the ball for the lay-in.
And another big problem is allowing Steven Hill to touch the ball. That's a turnover or defensive rebound waiting to happen. He's either going to lose the ball before he shoots it, or if he's shooting it he's not in much position to board – and that makes things considerably easier for the opposition.
If it isn't bad enough he had the ball, he had it far away from the basket. Free throw line and further back. What is Steven Hill doing with the ball out there? He's obviously not pulling the trigger from that range, as he's not Darnell Robinson. And he's no Vlade Divac, so he's not going to be whipping effective passes that lead to baskets from that spot. He's going to stand there and look confused for about four seconds and then throw it back to the guy who threw it to him – who is also standing at the exact same spot.
And then when they do get the ball to Hill in the post, they have him alone down low with the other four guys around the perimeter, with two of them over on his side – one on the wing, one in the corner. All that did was allow CMU to collapse three guys on him and easily strip the ball. And if they don't get the ball, what's his option? Kick it out for a 3-pt. shot that may or may not be contested, but definitely leaves little in the way of offensive rebounding opportunity.
Pat Beverly is good, but he's not Pat Bradley yet. And they don't have any other threats out there you should trust enough in that situation to not have anybody in to board.
It seems like there are two basic sets Stan likes to run: the motionless motion, and the pass-around perimeter. In the first they run a screen or two and if there's nothing there, they go to sleep for the final 27 seconds of the possession, or just go straight into the second set – which is often impossible to differentiate from going to sleep.
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