Arkansas makes Division I history in high-scoring loss at Alabama
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Arkansas did everything imaginable on Wednesday night without emerging from Coleman Coliseum with a victory over Alabama.
The 20th-ranked Razorbacks went on the road against another ranked SEC team in the 25th-ranked Crimson Tide, took a 10-point halftime lead, battled into overtime and then into double overtime before falling short in the end. John Calipari’s team even got a virtuoso performance from star guard Darius Acuff Jr., who poured in 49 points to go with 5 rebounds and 5 assists in 50 exhausting minutes.
But it wasn’t enough as the Hogs lost, 117-115, to fall into a 2nd-place tie with the Tide and Tennessee in the SEC standings at 9-4, 2 full games behind first-place Florida. Another thing Arkansas did was make some unwanted Division I basketball history in the process.
According to OptaSTATS, the Razorbacks became the only Division I team in the past 30 seasons to score 115-plus points with less than 10 turnovers while still losing the game. Division I teams had gone 247-0 during that time span when pulling off those numbers in a game.
Arkansas committed just 7 turnovers in the marathon loss, 5 less than Alabama, so the Hogs took care of the ball just fine, especially considering the game was 50 minutes long instead of 40.
Acuff played every one of those 50 minutes on Wednesday night, but all of it added up to a heartbreaking road defeat and a slice of that unwanted history to go with the heartbreak.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
