FAYETTEVILLE — As exciting as it will be to have real basketball be played on Nolan Richardson Court inside Bud Walton Arena between No. 12 Arkansas and No. 15 Gonzaga on Saturday, it's important to remember that the game is being played in October and that both head coaches have shared each other's inbounds plays and told each other that they will exclusively be playing man-to-man defense.
Both Arkansas and Gonzaga will be drastically different teams when they open their seasons during the first week of November, much less when conference play begins in January and the postseason rolls around in March.
There's certainly some things you can glean from exhibition games, especially those featuring two good teams, but a squad's ceiling or floor is not one of them.
A look back at Arkansas' past results in exhibition games proves just that.
In 2021, Arkansas squeaked out a pair of wins over East Central (77-74) and North Texas (68-60) in exhibition play before going on to have a stellar season that included a victory over No. 1 Auburn and a second straight trip to the Sweet 16. In 2022, they were handed a 30-point loss at the hands of Texas before proceeding to make the Sweet 16 again.
In 2023, excitement for the season peaked after Arkansas destroyed UT Tyler 92-39 and knocked off No. 1 Purdue 81-77 in overtime — only for the Hogs to go 16-17 overall and 6-12 in SEC play in Eric Musselman's tumultuous final season in Fayetteville.
In 2024, John Calipari's first Arkansas team — that infamously got off to an 0-5 start in SEC play before turning things around — beat No. 1 Kansas 85-69 before going to Fort Worth and losing 66-65 to TCU in its two exhibition matchups.
The bottom line is this: these games, while being fun for fans and providing young players with valuable experience, don't mean all that much in the grand scheme of things.
Sure, there are the beginnings of trends that can be picked up on and some very basic takeaways and overreactions to be had, but hardly anyone looks back at exhibition games at the end of a season and points to how accurately their results were a barometer for a team's success or lack thereof.
If you need any more examples, No. 2 Duke throttled No. 8 Tennessee 103-64 on Tuesday in an exhibition game.
The Blue Devils are a good basketball team, but so is Tennessee. Rest assured, the Vols will look much better by the time the season actually starts and will likely be near the top of the SEC once again this season.
It'd be shocking if Duke beats the likes of Michigan State and Illinois in the regular season as badly as it beat Tennessee.
No matter how poorly or how well Arkansas plays against Gonzaga on Saturday and Memphis on Oct. 28, fans and media alike will react, overreact and pick these games apart.
But not until the ball is tipped for Arkansas' official season-opener on Nov. 3 will we be able to start truly picking apart every second of basketball that is played. And when the season comes to an end for the Hogs, I doubt that we'll be looking at these two exhibitions as anything more than two fun basketball games that had no bearing on the rest of the year.
Sign up to our free newsletter, and follow us on Facebook, X (Twitter) and subscribe to our YouTube channel for the latest news.
Add us as a preferred source on Google