For the first time since Nolan Richardson’s “40 minutes of hell” the Razorbacks are in the Elite 8, and it’s thanks to a suffocating defense, and a big shot from Davonte Davis.

In the Sweet 16 matchup against Oral Roberts, the Razorbacks struggled early, and fell into a 12-point deficit. But coach Eric Musselman’s Razorbacks improved to 25-6 with a 72-70 victory on the strength of Davis’ jumper with 2.9 seconds remaining. Here’s a sampling of what Musselman said after the game:

“It’s an incredible feeling to be in an Elite Eight in our second year,” said Musselman, who took over the program in 2019. “I really can’t describe it.”

Musselman said Arkansas doesn’t run any plays for Davis, at least not right now, “we will next year, obviously. But he’s just a guy that balls, he just plays. First of all he guarded (Max) Abmas and did a great job. Even though he had 25, he took 19 shots, we held him to three 3s, he’s such a great shooter with great range, but he did have 5 turnovers. So you’re asking Devo to guard at a high level, he goes out and has 8 rebounds. He has 16 points, 2 assists … we weren’t great offensively tonight, but obviously found a way to win. I thought some of our steals helped us, but Devo was phenomenal on both sides of the ball, defensively and offensively.”

Musselman was asked about the trend of early deficits and what was the key to digging out of the hole.

“You’ve got to keep searching,” he said. “As a team, as a coaching staff for a matchup you like. We worked all week on our pick and roll coverage, I thought it was decent. Looking at the first 2 games Oral Roberts played, I thought our pick and roll defense was probably a little more effective than what they saw in Games 1 and 2, not much though. But I thought our trapping and trying to get the ball out of certain players’ hands was very effective. We didn’t want to do that going into the game because they have so many surrounding pieces that are shooters. Certainly we’d all like to get out to a lead, but at the end of the day, there’s going to be runs and right now we’ve been a really, really good second-half team all year.”

Arkansas will next play the winner of Florida State-Michigan, which is scheduled for 5 p.m. ET on Sunday.