Razorbacks' coach Mike Neighbors on Loss to UAPB
Arkansas Razorbacks coach Mike Neighbors warned it would happen someday and UAPB Golden Lions' 74-70 win Sunday made that clear.
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00:00 said all along, you said that y'all will lose one of these games.
00:02 So it happened.
00:03 Just what do you think led to this one?
00:05 How they played.
00:07 I'm not going to be that coach comes in here and gives you the, you know, uh,
00:11 the old song and dance that they outplayed us in there and then make a bunch of excuses.
00:14 There's none.
00:15 They, they have played very well this year.
00:17 Their record is not indicative.
00:19 They've had some tough breaks.
00:21 They didn't have any tough break.
00:21 They got all the breaks today.
00:23 They made them happen.
00:23 They got to every loose ball.
00:25 I don't know what the number is going to be, but when I look at that film, it's
00:28 going to be hard to watch because I felt like we would really defend and then they
00:32 would just out hustle us to the ball.
00:33 22 offensive rebounds tells you that they were really, um, playing harder than we
00:38 were, especially in the second half.
00:40 But I'm not gonna sit up here and make a bunch of excuses.
00:42 Cause they, they, I just don't want to be that coach that, you know, makes excuses
00:46 when another team kicks your butt, like they did.
00:48 Um, if there are reasons I'll go back and I'll figure it out.
00:52 Maybe I, I will figure that part of it out, but there's no reason we were not
00:56 tired when you did not look past them.
00:59 None of the obvious things.
01:01 I just think that's probably how good they kind of are.
01:03 Um, and the way they played today, especially in the second half, um, they
01:09 were just better than us and maybe better than us overall.
01:11 I don't know that yet, but they were certainly better than us in that second
01:14 half and probably the better, the whole game, except for just the third and the
01:17 second quarter.
01:18 So credit to them.
01:20 I've, I've been, like I said, like you mentioned, I've been telling
01:23 you, we're going to lose one of these.
01:24 It's just, it's too hard.
01:25 It's too hard to have to get up, uh, in the non-conference four times a year.
01:29 Um, obviously they had a great crowd.
01:32 Uh, but again, like I told Don at the end of the game, she earned that celebration.
01:36 Go celebrate your team had a great win.
01:38 Um, and I'm not mad that we've scheduled the game.
01:42 I'm not second guessing.
01:43 I'm not going to listen to any of that.
01:44 It's good for our game.
01:45 It's good for the state.
01:46 It just hurts today a little bit, but, um, uh, again, credit to them.
01:50 I thought, I thought Don and her staff did an amazing job.
01:53 I thought, you know, Zay obviously dominated the game in a lot of ways,
01:56 but it was those other kids.
01:58 It was Davenport getting six rebounds.
02:00 Julissa Reese getting in there and get a couple, uh, Kariah
02:03 hitting some really timely shots.
02:05 You know, she gets 15 on 21 point on 21 shots, but they were all timely.
02:09 I mean, they were like, we would get a stop and they'd get kicked
02:12 out to her and she'd drain it.
02:13 So, um, you know, for, for her to have a game like that in this gym, I mean, I
02:18 mean, if you're a Razorback fan, it's kind of cool, it sucks for us.
02:22 Uh, but for Kariah to do that with her dad in the stands and everything, they
02:26 were holding Corey out there behind the curtain.
02:28 I said, Corey, you can come back here.
02:29 You've earned that in this building.
02:30 So I'm glad we play the game.
02:32 It'll hurt today.
02:32 It'll sting.
02:33 Uh, we'll learn from it or we won't.
02:36 We'll find out.
02:36 We saw Sam with a mask on.
02:39 We saw Talia go down on the last shot.
02:41 Uh, just any update on, uh, Sam, you know, she got hit in the nose, like
02:46 second play of the game, second or third play of the game.
02:48 And it, you know, obviously had a lot of effect on her.
02:50 Uh, but she's a gamer.
02:52 She battled through it.
02:53 We didn't have, she didn't have her best stuff tonight, but that's okay.
02:55 You don't, um, you don't take a kid out that says that she can go.
03:00 She said she could go, just didn't work out for us, but she got hit.
03:03 I think Talia came down on the kid's foot there at the very end.
03:06 Uh, we'll get it looked at.
03:07 Uh, she's walking on it.
03:09 She's going to get some treatment today before she goes home.
03:11 Um, you know, Saylor's got the shit.
03:13 We've all got something.
03:14 We've got a lot of people in boots.
03:16 Uh, we missed Emory tonight.
03:17 There's no getting around that.
03:19 We missed her toughness.
03:20 I felt like Emory's toughness, uh, could have been very
03:23 valuable for us on those boards.
03:25 Uh, our freshmen are just not ready to play in a game like that yet.
03:28 Chris did her best.
03:29 Uh, Carly came off the bench and gave us 13 minutes, but we
03:33 really missed Emory tonight.
03:34 Uh, coach.
03:37 I mean, I guess early in the season, y'all had some issues protecting
03:40 leads and things like that tonight.
03:42 Wasn't that big of a lead, but was it some of the old things that from the
03:46 early in the season that pop back that you can, it's a good observation
03:49 and a really good question that I don't know the answer to yet.
03:52 Um, in games like this that get emotional, like they do my, my
03:57 analytical brain doesn't work very well, uh, to be able to compare something
04:02 that happened two or three weeks ago, but you could very well be right.
04:05 Um, it could be our lack, a little bit of lack of being able to rest some of
04:09 those kids, Talia, you know, not having to play, haven't played 40 minutes
04:13 instead of 36, you know, maybe she makes that last shot, so I'll look at what
04:18 we've been doing in practice, uh, to make sure that they've got their legs
04:21 for come game time, because, you know, it's not like Emory's going to be back.
04:25 I'm not sure when Emory will be back, but you can't count on that.
04:28 So there, there could be some correlation.
04:30 Uh, there's not any that jumped to my mind.
04:33 They've all been kind of different things in the past.
04:35 It was usually because of a lineup change that I had made and those other leads,
04:40 like we would be up 20 and I would try to play some younger kids and some rotations.
04:44 That was not the case tonight.
04:45 I stuck with those starters almost through the second half.
04:48 So if I were to lean on anything, my best guess would be that we did get tired, uh,
04:52 because of how hard they made us play.
04:55 Not how hard we worked in practice, but not how, how hard they made us play this
05:00 afternoon from one o'clock to whatever time it is now, I guess, is that also
05:04 something that you have to evaluate?
05:06 You have, looks like three people over 39 minutes.
05:09 Is that something that's probably sustainable or not sustainable moving forward?
05:14 Probably not sustainable the way that we've been doing it.
05:17 I mean, if we made some changes to practice and maybe how many minutes we had in
05:20 practice or how many reps we had in practice, we could sustain that.
05:23 Uh, cause I do think Tyler and our strength and conditioning staff, our
05:26 nutritional staff have done a great job of getting them to be able to play that
05:30 many minutes.
05:31 Um, but it's not something we really want to do when SEC rolls around.
05:34 I will tell you that the SEC season lays out a little bit more routinely.
05:40 You play Thursday, Sunday.
05:41 Uh, right now we're heading into finals.
05:44 We've been doing those things in the non-conference.
05:46 Um, you know, we try to play 15 games, which is a full schedule.
05:50 There's a lot of teams that only play 13, so we don't get as much rest.
05:54 That could be something to evaluate maybe, but I'm not just going to do it
05:57 right after we lose, you know, we'll look at it at the end of the year.
06:00 Yep.
06:01 Scott was on such a heater early.
06:04 Uh, their coach said they actually walked through some things in the
06:07 locker room at halftime to work on coming off screens from your perspective.
06:11 What did they do?
06:11 They made change.
06:12 They were kind of letting us play off of them initially, and we'd worked on
06:16 them pressure and they started showing, they started trapping hard hedge and
06:19 doing aggressive things, grant, uh, to get it out of her hands.
06:22 Uh, we had worked on it.
06:25 We obviously didn't work on it enough to get rid of it.
06:27 Uh, and then make a play.
06:29 I think she got rid of it a number of times, but then we would hold it.
06:32 The ball would stall and we didn't re-attack.
06:34 So I think their, their adjustment was brilliant.
06:37 I mean, she was on a heater and you know, I've been telling y'all that that's
06:40 coming, it's going to continue to come.
06:42 Um, but we've got to go to that next step.
06:45 What happens when the teams do this?
06:47 Okay.
06:48 That it's on film now.
06:49 So, um, we didn't adjust to their adjustments effectively.
06:53 And then I think when it started working, then we started, you know, kind
06:56 of pressing a little bit and shots are always harder when you've got a
06:59 little bit more pressure on you.
07:00 But I thought she, again, I thought she made the right reads the right plays.
07:06 Uh, I know she got tired there at the end and turned it over a couple of times,
07:09 but that's not indicative of the game.
07:11 I think she played.
07:13 Yeah.
07:13 Kind of zeroing in on that fourth quarter in specific.
07:16 Just what did you APB do that may, I mean, just offensively y'all had
07:20 a lot of, a lot of struggles there.
07:22 Yeah.
07:22 They, they got us disorganized.
07:24 Well, they were scoring too, you know, 14 is not a lot, but it
07:27 seemed like a ton more than that.
07:29 I thought they were pressuring us, got us back on our heels in transition.
07:33 Uh, got us kind of looking around.
07:34 Then we overhelped a little bit and they dumped it off to the, to, for an easy
07:38 basket, uh, you know, uh, to hold Zay and, and Cori to 14 for 35 or 33.
07:46 You know, we've got to do a better job of rebounding it on those misses.
07:50 Uh, they're going to get their points.
07:52 There's not much you can do, especially with Zay on her getting her shot.
07:54 She can create her shot at any time, but I thought they got us on our heels.
07:58 Then I thought I'll, you know, our defense, uh, because they were scoring
08:02 and putting a lot of pressure on it probably led to our offense
08:04 being a little bit rushed.
08:06 Um, I had to use a couple of timeouts to save possessions that
08:10 I wish we could have had to rest.
08:11 That's kind of been our MO in the fourth quarter to use timeouts to rest.
08:15 Uh, but we had to use one too early in the game and then we didn't have that
08:18 one available for rest at the end.
08:20 But again, I just, I thought they were the more aggressive team.
08:23 Um, and, and it, it showed in the result.
08:26 Um, last thing for me is sailor hits that shot to get it within one.
08:30 And then, uh, Demetria Shepherd hits that corner three, um, just after an
08:34 offensive rebound.
08:35 Yeah.
08:35 Just what'd you that possession for them?
08:37 Uh, I mean, it seems like it dictated the outcome.
08:40 No question.
08:40 I think it deflated us and it got their crowd into it and got their kids into it.
08:46 You can hear them on the floor talking about, they were talking about
08:48 that next defensive possession.
08:49 I'm not sure which kid it was.
08:51 I'll I'm going to go back and look at it on film and make sure Don knows that what
08:54 I heard, but their kid turned around and yelled a defensive assignment out on that.
08:58 That next possession that was spot on.
09:01 I don't know who it was.
09:02 I'm going to guess, I'm going to guess that it was 25 or it could have been,
09:07 it could have been shepherd.
09:08 It was Walker or shepherd turned around and yelled something to her teammates.
09:11 That blew, completely blew our play up that had been working.
09:14 So I just thought they, um, executed.
09:17 They thought they handled the moments better when they took that four point lead.
09:21 It was very deflating.
09:23 I felt the air leave the building.
09:24 I felt the air leave our bitch.
09:26 Uh, I felt the air leave DJ Derek.
09:29 I mean, all of us, it just took it out of us.
09:31 Um, and that's, um, that's where I go back to some of the pressure of playing
09:36 against all these in-state schools.
09:38 It's four times a year.
09:39 Maybe it's too much.
09:40 I don't know.
09:41 I'll talk to some smart people around me, but I like it.
09:44 I think it's good for our game.
09:45 And again, I'm not going to second guess what we're doing, but I do know it's
09:48 really hard to do, get up four times in the, in the preseason.
09:51 Uh, but again, I hope I haven't said anything that would make y'all think I'm
09:56 that coach that I don't want to be getting up here and making excuses.
10:00 They, they earned it.
10:01 They, they won the game.
10:02 They out prepared, they outdid everything and, um, we'll learn from it.