Arkansas' dreadful day includes losses on and off the floor

A dreadful day for Arkansas basketball began Wednesday morning when a coveted in-state shooting guard coach Mike Anderson had pursued for years announced he was committing to Kentucky.

Things only got worse by Wednesday night when an awful performance from the Razorbacks only validated Malik Monk's decision not to attend his hometown school.

Arkansas lost 88-80 at home against a shorthanded Akron team that shot 51 percent from the field despite not even having its full complement of depth as a result of injuries. The Razorbacks never led and trailed by as many as 14 points midway through the second half.

The upset loss highlighted how far Arkansas (1-1) has fallen between the end of last season and the start of this one. A Razorbacks team that won 27 games and reached the NCAA tournament last season lost all five starters and 78 percent of its scoring.

SEC player of the year Bobby Portis and second-team all-league guard Michael Qualls both entered the NBA draft. Fellow starters Ky Madden and Alandise Harris exhausted their eligibility. Then top 100 signee Ted Kapita failed to qualify and Anderson suspended three players including promising guard Anton Beard and rotation big man Jacorey Williams after they were arrested on suspicion of first-degree forgery. Beard will return to the team in mid-December while Williams is done for good at Arkansas.

All the roster turnover surely didn't help in Arkansas' pursuit of Monk, a 6-foot-4 shooting guard with deep range and jaw-dropping athleticism. It surely also didn't help the Razorbacks that their main challenger was a Kentucky program that has reached the Final Four five out of the last six years and sends a handful of players to the NBA each spring.

Arkansas supporters were hoping the allure of playing in his home state at a school where his older brother Marcus starred would be enough to offset Kentucky's appeal. Anderson and his staff made Monk their top priority the past couple years, even having the entire team sit side-by-side in the first row of the bleachers at Fayetteville High School last March when Monk's team made its lone visit of the season.

Not surprisingly, losing a consensus top 10 recruit with so many ties to Arkansas did not go over well with Razorbacks supporters.

An Arkansas radio host went on a crazed 12-minute rant that included the warning to Monk and his family that they "better move." A search of Monk's name on social media is even more deplorable. Even Portis weighed in with a tweet that has more than 5,000 retweets.

Tough times for Arkansas, and there could be more of them ahead too if they don't defend better as a team and find complementary scorers to support the trio of Anthlon Bell, Dusty Hannahs and Moses Kingsley.

This will probably be a difficult season for the Razorbacks and Monk's decision squelched out much of the optimism that things will get better next year.

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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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