Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

OXFORD, Miss — As the Arkansas Razorback faithful have learned this month, as they saw earlier against Texas A&M, the Hogs can play poorly enough early to find themselves with mountains to climb over the course of a game. And yet, even if the Hogs don't quite have some Sir Edmund Hillary in them to scale the most majestic of peaks, they have enough fortitude to climb up some average hills.

Arkansas did that again Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, falling behind the bedraggled Ole Miss Rebels 17-0 in the first half. The Razorbacks even gave Houston Nutt's fourth Ole Miss team a chance to say "what if" at the end, giving up a touchdown pass after a 29-point Razorback scoring spree, and then letting the Rebels' Jamal Mosley recover an onside kick just 57 yards away and with 1:21 showing on the clock — plenty of time — to somehow overtake the Hogs.

But freshman end Trey Flowers sacked the Rebels mercurial quarterback, Randall Mackey, for a loss of 11 yards on first down — one of the few times the defense brought Mackey down on a scramble. Sophomore safety Eric Bennett then stole Mackey's deep pass on the next play to finish the Rebels, who looked like anything but a team that had lost nine straight SEC games.

"I wish we had the third quarter back," Nutt said.

Arkansas scored 19 of its points in that period, and the Rebels went extremely conservative in the play-calling, with the exception of two deep throws.

On one of those, however, Ole Miss freshman Donte Moncrief had a couple of steps on the secondary but didn't have the ball controlled before Bennett and freshman corner Tevin Mitchel sandwiched him and the ball came loose for an incompletion at the Hogs' 25. Moncrief had two touchdown catches, including the one with 1:23 to play on a fade route over Arkansas senior cornerback Isaac Madison.

Nutt said of the third quarter, "There were a couple of series on defense that we didn't do anything. I wish Donte Moncrief would have caught one more ball. I think that would have put us over the edge. We needed something in the third quarter to give us confidence. We needed to go ahead and finish it."

Nutt, while he was Arkansas' coach for 10 years, wasted a lead of 17 points or more only once. That was in 1998 in Knoxville when the Hogs blew an 18-point lead against eventual national champion Tennessee. But Arkansas fans can relate to what he said about not finishing what would have been a monumental upset for the Rebels' program. It would have likely put an end — at least for a while — to all the negativity surrounding his program, as well as questions about his job status in his fourth year.

It would have made Arkansas fans wonder what the heck was going on with Bobby Petrino's program, too, fresh off an open date. No question they still will wonder why Arkansas' defense takes nearly a full half to adjust and to play harder. Go back even through the Hogs' 6-0 run to finish the 2010 regular season and the Sugar Bowl loss to Ohio State and notice how the UA defense appeared unprepared early on for what was coming.

What made it doubly tough for Arkansas in the first quarter-and-a-half Saturday was that the offense seemed stuck in mud, too. (Ole Miss has an artificial turf, in case you were wondering why the Hogs' legs looked so slow on offense and defense. It wasn't due to field conditions.)

Offensive coordinator Garrick McGee didn't hesitate to place some of the offense's blames at the feet of junior quarterback Tyler Wilson, who was uncharacteristically off with his passing all day, hitting 13 of 28 for 232 yards. "Ole Miss had a great plan, and our quarterback helped their plan." Apparently, both McGee and Petrino indicated, mistakes came early and often from Wilson.

Arkansas on its first three possessions made Ole Miss' statistically terrible defense look like it was Alabama.