I finally feel comfortable offering “Pearls” on this iteration of the University of Arkansas men’s basketball team. But that’s only because they do not have a midweek game to dominate — or disappear for — affording me a chance to stabilize my views.

They’re mercurial, again, in short because the guys with experience aren’t producing the way they need to. Akin to last year, when it took three-quarters of the season for transfers Johnell Davis and Jonas Aidoo to elevate their games, Arkansas’s recent turbulence is attributable to weirdly up-and-down seasons from Nick Pringle, D.J. Wagner and Karter Knox.

That fluctuating tenacity from three seasoned SEC players is plainly evident statistically. In Arkansas’s six conference wins, the trio has scored 153 points, an average of 25.5 per game; in three SEC losses, they’ve combined for 23, fewer than eight points per contest. Total. Across three players with seven seasons of high-level college ball between them. 

Look, the Auburn and Georgia losses were pretty much preordained. Arkansas had done so precious little in true road games that it was hardly shocking to see those games turn out to be duds. 

The Kentucky game, however, was another rotten carcass altogether. Mark Pope, dragged by fans in and around Lexington for weeks, got sweet revenge for last year’s shocking loss at Rupp Arena to a then-reeling Hog team that promptly turned its 2024-25 season around that night.

Wagner has registered four points in each of the three conference losses, and he had a goose egg on the score sheet against Oklahoma in a narrow road win in Norman. He’s struggling to fit in, and that’s discouraging because he is a talented, leadership-oriented guy. At times on the socials lately, I’ve kinda let him have it, and I feel both vindicated and sad for expressing my jaded view of his play.

Wagner’s not the only troublingly erratic player, though. Pringle remains a mysterious choice to start, given that he’s not a gifted scorer and that his alleged calling card of being an interior defensive presence has been more of an absence. He’s been burned repeatedly in the opening minutes of games by quick, explosive bigs, and guess what? Arkansas has dug double-digit holes in the first half of damn near every contest.

These failures partially lays at the feet of John Calipari, who gets understandably frustrated with Malique Ewin‘s own unpredictable play. It is in many ways a replay of last year, when Trevon Brazile and Aidoo struggled to protect the paint, while Zvonomir Ivisic was frankly atrocious on that end unless he slapped away a smaller guy’s layup attempt. 

Knox is so gifted, but he hasn’t been the solution, either. In the three conference losses, his playing time dipped sharply. Calipari seems to be playing the square-peg, round-hole game with him: he’s too short and slight to be an inside banger, not consistent enough with his shot to be dangerous on the outside, and prone to silly fouls to boot. 

The team’s perimeter defense does not escape scrutiny here, either. Arkansas is a high-scoring, volume-offense team, and it has had stretches of incredible play on the defensive end of the court. In those three conference losses (and the three non-conference ones, too), the Hogs’ poor shooting bedeviled them, but they could’ve survived if those early and late game lapses in transition and in the paint had abated. They did not.

You’d think that a 16-6 team, who are 6-3 in conference play, could at least match that 6-3 record on the back half of the schedule. Given the unspeakably torturous pre-SEC slate, Arkansas is well situated to have a respectable NCAA tournament seeding. Assuming the Hogs can indeed go at least 6-3 down the stretch, win a game or two in the SEC tourney, and enter the March field with 23 or 24 wins, they’ll be a dangerous entry in the field.

They’ll also be a fashionable pick as an upset victim when March Madness rolls around. Why not? There’s no real shame losing to any of the six teams that beat them, but there were so many flaws exposed in those games that the film simply will not lie.

The glimmer of hope I’ll end with is that Davis, Aidoo, and Brazile really started clicking at the right time last season, and it carried Arkansas within an eyelash of the Elite Eight. That is possible again. This is a fun team with Darius Acuff having an unprecedented three months in a Hog jersey and Meleek Thomas, Billy Richmond III, Brazile and Ewin all producing well. 

I am not giving up on ’em, not remotely. There is zero reason to do so with a squad like this, but its the quality of that roster that makes the struggles so puzzling to fans. Calipari, thankfully, has a history of sorting those things out.