Duke favored by 4 pts against Arkansas

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Honestly have we been the real favorite to win any of our games so far in the tourney? Everyone was picking Vermont to upset us. Then it was we couldn't handle New Mexico State. Then the Zags were going to blow us out of the arena.

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Muss is going to need some new tacks for all this bulletin board material.

Hopefully the media spends the next two days burying us and firing up that little madman.

BPI says Puke has a 68% chance of winning - Put it on the board

Gary Parish crying and acting like Arkansas only beat Gonzaga because of officials - Put it on the board.

Ironically Stephen A Smith and Seth Greenberg were the only two talking heads to give us credit this morning.

We play defense like Texas Tech and they were right there at the end.

So, transitive property here:

- Duke beat Gonzaga this year 84-81.

- Gonzaga also BEAT Texas Tech this year 69-55.

- Tech just barely lost to Duke.

- We just beat Gonzaga.

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We play similarly to Tech.

Tech stifled Duke for 3/4 of the game.

Duke switched to Zone, caused Tech a brief scoring drought, and then went on like a 20-7 run to end the game and shot 100% from the floor the last 8 mins...and they still barely won.

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Richardson said in a USA Today interview that an older, more mature Arkansas team would be “three, four, five points better” than Duke if both were playing at peak efficiency. Of course, in the NCAA Tournament, both teams rarely play to their full potential, which is why three No. 1 seeds — including the top overall seed, Gonzaga — had been eliminated from the field by the end of Thursday night. “The raggedy ride is better than a smooth walk,” Richardson said. “If you’ve got to go 10 miles in the snow, the guy in a car that’s falling apart is going to get there before the guy who has a smooth walk.”

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NY Post Article

I think it’s cool Nolan is getting a lot of attention this year. He’s done a few interviews talking up Arkansas.

Also, Oliver Miller got active on Twitter last night which was fun to see.

Was listening to Muss presser today and he said he went to the team and put it to a vote whether to have shoot around tomorrow since it’s at 8:55 am tomorrow morning, or sleep in and rest.

The team voted unanimously to have shoot around and asked that they go just as hard as they always do in stations.

In that same presser, I got the feeling Muss couldn't give 2 shits about Coach K and his bullshite hype train.

He also had some quite interesting comments on recruiting and transfers.

He got kind of hyped up and basically said, "I don't give a shite about trying to be some rigid traditionalist, if you don't have transfers, you aren't going to win, and I'm going to keep on hitting the portal hard, no matter how many freshman I have coming in."

He also said they they flood the market with contact with transfers, no matter if think the guy can play or not. He said they may make 40 calls and only really want 4 guys.

He said they do it to throw off the scent of opposing coaches who are trying to use Arkansas' scouting to build their own programs.

Start at 24:00 min mark

The man is a genius. I hope we make him extremely rich.

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A unhealthy dose of ACC dick riding coming next week if we beat Duke.

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If we knock off Duke I fully expect at least one talking head on ESPN to commit Seppuku on live TV while crying about poor Coach K. We've been the designated bad guys the entire tourney and I hope we keep winning just to spite these folks.