FAYETTEVILLE — As much promise as Arkansas showed in its 76-72 exhibition win over Gonzaga on Saturday, there are plenty of things for the Hogs to clean up.
The Razorbacks will host Memphis, which beat Mississippi State 75-58 in Starkville on Friday, on Wednesday in their second and final exhibition game before opening the season against UAPB on Nov. 3.
Here are three things the Hogs must fix against the Tigers to avoid giving Memphis a second road win over an SEC team in exhibition play.
Free throw shooting
It may have gone relatively unnoticed because Arkansas made enough plays down the stretch to win the game, but the Razorbacks were atrocious at the foul line on Saturday.
Arkansas shot 17-30 (56.7 percent) from the charity stripe. Had they made even just three or four more, Saturday's game wouldn't have been nearly as stressful in the closing minutes.
Miikka Muurinen made one of his three foul shots, Billy Richmond went 6-10, JJ Andrews went 2-4 and Maper Maker went 1-3. Even Jordan Smith Jr., who didn't make a field goal on Saturday, split his two attempts from the line.
Davion Thompson (2-2) was the only Razorback who was perfect from the line, while Abdou Toure went 3-4.
Arkansas did an excellent job of drawing fouls, but if you can't convert at the free throw line, especially in the waning moments of close games, simply getting to the line does little good.
Finishing at the rim
If you were told that Arkansas shot 5-16 in a particular category on Saturday, you'd expect said category to be three-point shooting.
But the Razorbacks went only 5-16 on layups and struggled to finish in the paint all afternoon. (For what it's worth, UA shot an impressive 11-24 (45.8 percent) from beyond the arc.)
Billy Richmond had multiple missed layups in the first half, while Cooper Bowser, Davion Thompson and Jeremiah Wilkinson all missed layups as well. Missing tough, contested shots at the rim isn't a huge deal in October, but Arkansas will have to capitalize on such opportunities moving forward.
"They're big, and you know, I thought there were times on four or five of our turnovers where we drove into seven-footers," head coach John Calipari said. "He's there. Don't keep going. I'm going to get this off. You're not getting it off. It's going to [be] a block. They ended up with four, but we ended up with six. And one of the things I told you, they cleared us out some. We got to do some work on that."
Cleaning the glass
Rebounding wasn't a huge issue for Arkansas on Saturday, but it could certainly stand to be better. Gonzaga won the rebound battle 52-48 and pulled down 19 offensive rebounds to Arkansas' 17.
There were several 50/50 balls after missed shots from the 'Zags that Arkansas missed out on, as well as a couple of plays where the Razorbacks failed to adequately box out. Against the likes of Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Arizona, the Hogs will have to do a better job of blocking out and grabbing every available rebound.
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