Another year, another buzzsaw in the Elite 8. That’s how the 2021-22 story ended for Arkansas.

Once again, the Hogs might’ve been sent packing by the eventual national champs.

It wasn’t just hot or cold shooting. It wasn’t the officiating. It wasn’t a collapse.

Duke was better than Arkansas. Baylor was better than Arkansas. Fittingly, both were 9-point losses.

Both had pregame storylines of just how far the program had come, and both had postgame storylines of just how far the program still has to go.

To be fair, there might not have been a team in the country capable of beating Duke at that level. A team with No. 3 and No. 4 options as future first-rounders looked the part. Duke, like Baylor, was always going to have a peak better than Arkansas’ peak. What 40 minutes against both of those teams told us was just how challenging it is to hit that peak with the season on the line.

Also to be fair, Arkansas didn’t play its best game of the year against Gonzaga and still managed to upset the top seed in the field. The Hogs’ best offensive player, JD Notae, missed 20 shots that night. Still, though, team defense and smart decision-making in the half court led to the program’s first upset over a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Maybe it was always too tall of a task for Arkansas to turn around and beat Duke roughly 48 hours after the high of the Gonzaga win. Eric Musselman was hoping that his team could half the same mindset against a Duke team who had all the pregame buzz with Mike Krzyzewski’s well-documented retirement tour in full swing.

CBS’ Tracy Wolfson asked Musselman before Saturday night’s contest if there was a different approach against Duke compared to the one that worked against Gonzaga.

“Nothing’s changed. Same thing, Tracy,” Musselman said.

Same approach, different result.

Duke is built different than Gonzaga. With Gonzaga, the game changed with future lottery pick Chet Holmgren in foul trouble. Arkansas recognized it could attack him on offense, and when the Razorbacks were on defense, the strategy of making life difficult on Gonzaga point guard Andrew Nembhard worked to perfection.

Against Duke? Arkansas couldn’t really take any future lottery pick away. If anything, Paolo Banchero confirmed why scouts should be drooling over the 6-10 freshman. He got high-percentage looks at the rim, he converted at the free-throw line and he made a big 3-pointer in the second half.

But it wasn’t just Banchero. The SEC’s No. 1 defense had no answer for a Duke offense who had 6 players finish between 9 and 18 points. Mike Williams was automatic around the rim, AJ Griffin made seemingly every mid-range shot he attempted and Wendell Moore quietly added 14 of his own.

It’s funny because if you told an Arkansas fan that it would force 15 turnovers and Duke would make just 4 3-pointers all night, you probably would’ve thought that the Hogs were moving on. Add in the fact that Notae and Stanley Umude had 14 apiece while Jaylin Williams had 19 points, 10 boards and 2 drawn charges, yeah, Arkansas fans would’ve taken that all day, every day.

On other nights, that would’ve been good enough. On Saturday night, it wasn’t.

On other nights, a Williams dunk like this would’ve sparked an Arkansas run:

Instead, that was the last real bright spot of the night.

Arkansas never got closer than a 5-point deficit. Oh, and when that happened via a Williams and-1, Duke casually rattled off an 8-0 run to balloon the lead back out to 13.

That’s what great teams do. Duke, despite all the pre-NCAA Tournament chatter about the Senior Night letdown in Krzyzewski’s last meeting vs. UNC at Cameron Indoor, is indeed a great team. No amount of anti-Duke support could’ve helped Arkansas pull out a win on Saturday night.

Like last year against Baylor when Arkansas could never get within 1 possession the second half, Musselman’s team could never truly change momentum. There wasn’t some 9-0 run to perhaps prompt Duke to tighten up a bit. The Blue Devils had their foot on the gas all night.

Little things caught up to Arkansas. Instead of playing for the final shot of the first half in a 9-point game, Chris Lykes fired off an ill-advised 3-pointer with 11 seconds left on the shot clock that led to a Duke runout and a 3 going into the half. Williams played his tail off, but he missed a handful of layups he probably wished he could have back. And once Duke switched to the zone, Arkansas’ offense never really figured it out.

It was far from a perfect night. That’s what it would’ve taken to beat the Duke team who showed up on Saturday.

“We lost to a better team tonight. That’s what happened,” Musselman said afterwards on the CBS broadcast. “Our defense did not hold up like it has all season long. Rebounding, they’re a really, really good basketball team. You have to tip your cap to them. They won the game. It’s a really good basketball team.”

So was Arkansas. It just didn’t have that kind of ceiling. Maybe it’s not crazy to think that ceiling will be raised as 1 of 2 programs to make consecutive Elite 8 trips.

Musselman also added that Duke was the best team that Arkansas faced all year, and he’d be surprised if the Blue Devils didn’t play for a title.

Compare that to what he said about Baylor after last year’s Elite 8 loss:

Some day, perhaps, someone will be saying that about Musselman’s team as Arkansas cuts down the nets in a Regional Final. That’s the mission. And based on what we saw from him so far, it’s a perfectly realistic mission. Two teams with totally different identities found their own path to reach an Elite 8. It had been 7 years since an SEC team accomplished that feat, and it had been 27 years since Arkansas accomplished that feat.

It’s up to Musselman to get Arkansas to more new heights. It’s a place only few in the sport can realistically obtain. Disappointing ending aside, the Hogs certainly laid the foundation for that to happen.

They know all too well what that next level looks like.