Hogs hope to continue good play at Auburn

FAYETTEVILLE — Sam Pittman is hoping to repeat this Saturday what happened in 2022 when the Razorbacks went to Auburn and won the game.

Arkansas defeated Auburn 41-27 on Oct. 29, 2022. In Pittman’s first season the Hogs lost at Auburn 30-28 on a very controversial ending. The Hogs head to Auburn this Saturday with both teams setting at 2-1 on the year. Through the years Arkansas usually plays well at Auburn.

“I don’t know,” Pittman said. “I mean, because I think Saturday night you were talking about [playing at home], but we’ve even talked about noise at practice on a home game. Because what happens with noise is your communication has to be better, because you’re having it. Now, it’s just offensively, so it doesn’t really affect the defense, you know. But we’ve gone down there, you’re right, my first year, and it was raining if you remember. Then 2 years ago, we went out there and then they came in here last year, just what you said. So, hopefully, the trend keeps going and we can go up there.

“And I think we’ll play really well. I think they will too and we’ll find out what happens. But we’ve seen to be able to handle the noise. If you look at it on tape, and that’s the one thing we’re going to talk about today, every team that’s been in there, of course, this is their 4th home game in a row and our 3rd out of 4, you know, on the road. But the 3 teams that they played at home have been affected by the crowd and the noise. So, we have to take that out of the game if at all possible.”

The Razorbacks seemingly had some momentum built after beating UAPB 70-0 and then outplaying then No. 16 Oklahoma State in Stillwater. But a 37-27 win over UAB on Saturday took some of the glamour off the first two games despite the Razorbacks finding a way to win. Pittman was asked if the film of UAB told him anything.

“Well, not really,” Pittman said. “I mean, after we — I felt like I pretty much knew what went on. A lot of times you have to go back to see who played well, who didn’t and all that, but schematically we just didn’t play well. You know, they had the ball most of the first half and 15-play drive to start it. Two-play drive to score again. We just didn’t play well defensively, especially in the first half and pretty much the entire game. Didn’t tackle well. Had some missed assignments. Couldn’t get lined up on some specialty blitzes. One of them, they were in the middle of the field, we worked it in practice, just couldn’t get the communication right.

“Offensively, I think it’s what you saw. I mean, what we saw after the game. We can run the ball, probably need to run it more. But, we can also throw it, we just weren’t quite as accurate. Didn’t run as good of routes as we could have and we dropped five balls. That certainly has a lot to do with winning and losing. But, no, it was about what I thought after the game.”

How difficult is it to get up for an opponent you are supposed to beat?

“I think usually you play a little bit better when you didn’t play well,” Pittman said. “Hopefully you won the game, you know. You look at Kentucky, same thing. They were mad. They got focused and played a great game against Georgia. As much as you talk about … these games are about us vs. us. The one Saturday was us vs. us. We had better players. Hopefully we had as good a coaching staff as they did.

“The fire that you play with is something that’s expected. So I don’t know for sure. Obviously I think all of us coaches would like to figure that out. But I think I heard Kirby (Smart) say they were mad. They were embarrassed the week before, Kentucky. That’s a little bit how we feel right now going into the Auburn game. So hopefully that’s a good thing for us.”

One thing that was noticeable on Saturday was after the Hogs were very assignment sound against OSU that wasn’t the case against UAB.

“I think some of that, you know what happens sometimes when you answer a question it’s like an excuse,” Pittman said. “But you have to answer the question. It’s a good question. Some of it was we had a lot of guys that were hurt. They practiced but the speed of practice, because we had them at all levels hurt, wasn’t what we want.

“Obviously T-Will (Travis Williams) is vitally important to the teaching of defense and also the motivation. He was out some. But we’ve got older players that understand that when they’re supposed to be in the B gap they’re supposed to be in the B gap. I mean, I think a lot of times you don’t get to that gap because you’re not playing with the same urgency that you should be and you get knocked out of your gap. I think it all boils down to I don’t think we played as hard as what we had in the first two games at times. And we have to get that fixed.”

Arkansas and Auburn will kickoff at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday at Auburn and televised on ESPN. It was announced on Monday night that Arkansas and Texas A&M will kickoff at either 2:30 or 3:15 on Saturday, Sept. 28. The game will be televised on either ABC, ESPN or the SEC Network.