USA Today: Arkansas football expects positive steps to become leaps forward

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It has become a popular way to measure the strength and depth of the SEC West: The margin of separation last season between Alabama, which won the division and reached the College Football Playoff, and Arkansas, which finished last, was one point.

For the Razorbacks, coming off a late-season breakthrough they hope translates into more success next fall, the comparison is both encouraging and frustrating.

"We were so close," senior receiver Keon Hatcher says. "We felt like we were close to the top — we just weren't mature enough to make it happen."

At least, not until last November, when they shut out LSU and Ole Miss in consecutive games, then finished with an emphatic rout of old rival Texas in the Texas Bowl. Coming after several earlier near-misses (including that 14-13 loss to Alabama) in which the Hogs competed with highly ranked opponents until the final gun, the fast finish has them dreaming big about next fall.

How close are they now? Has the program matured enough to climb out of the cellar and into contention in college football's most rugged division?

"The goal this year," says senior left guard Sebastian Tretola, "is to win it."

He's referring to winning the SEC West, which lately has extrapolated to winning the SEC championship, and would almost certainly mean earning a berth in the playoff. If that seems like too lofty a goal for a program that has now won a total of two SEC games in the two seasons since Bret Bielema's arrival, it probably is. But consider this:

Attempting to describe the parity, Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said last week that each team in the West believes it will win the division — and has legitimate reason for that hope. That kind of optimistic outlook is also nearly universal during springtime. Football teams are always either building off momentum from a fast finish or putting off bad memories to get a fresh start. Arkansas would fit the former category. But as the Razorbacks prepare for their spring game Saturday, they point to evidence of a rapidly maturing program.

Bielema says they took "baby steps" last season, learning to win at home.

"Our last two games at home, we beat two ranked teams," he says. "Not only beat 'em, we beat 'em like yard dogs, shut 'em out. We won effectively by defending our home turf."

Taking the next step won't be easy. It's not like the SEC West has changed a whole lot; though its image was dented somewhat during bowl season, when its teams went 2-5 with only Texas A&M (sixth place in the standings) and Arkansas (seventh place) winning their matchups.

Arkansas brings back 15 starters. Everything begins, as always with Bielema's teams, with an offensive line he predicts will be the best in his short tenure here. That's saying something, considering the way the Hogs' hogs controlled the line of scrimmage at times last season, paving the path for a bruising running game.

Although they've shuffled positions this spring, four starters return. They've slimmed down a little bit, but they're still massive, and if anything, their collective attitude might have only grown nastier with that taste of success last season.

"Our goal," Tretola says, "is to physically dominate you to the point where you don't want to play the game anymore."

They'll poke open holes for the potent running back tandem of Jonathan Williams and Alex Collins (both rushed for more than 1,100 yards in 2014), and Bielema is also touting senior Kody Walker, a 6-2, 250-pound power runner whom the coach calls "a perfect fit for our offense".

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