Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

His T-shirt wet with sweat, Arkansas forward Marshawn Powell was walking away from the practice court just as his teammates were headed that way for practice Tuesday. Powell had been walking stairs on Bud Walton Arena's concourse as part of his rehabilitation of the torn knee ligaments that have kept him sidelined this season.

Powell completed that task and was headed to do more rehab work in the training room. Arkansas’ healthy players were waiting on a women’s practice to end so they could prepare for Thursday’s game against Alabama.

Perhaps Powell would watch the final portions of practice, depending on when his work with athletic training personnel was complete. Sometimes he's been finished in time to make that happen.

This scene was just the latest reminder of the absence of the Razorbacks’ best player.

Powell, who was declared out for the season prior to the team’s third game, dutifully sits behind the bench at each home game. He has even been to a road game or two this season so he didn’t feel totally isolated from the Razorbacks.

There have been times Powell has offered words of encouragement to his teammates, “counsel” as Coach Mike Anderson calls it. That’s the extent of what Powell has done — what the can do — for Arkansas this season.

“It’s been as good as it can be,” Anderson told us Tuesday when I asked how Powell’s season had been going. Surely missing the year and watching the team’s struggles have been tough on Powell.

We know his absence is getting tougher on the team.

Prior to a stretch that has seen the Razorbacks lose four of their last five games, including the worst loss in Bud Walton Arena history, it looked like Arkansas might actually do more than just survive without Powell. Florida’s 98-68 victory on Saturday eliminated any real conversation about Arkansas as a NCAA Tournament team, but that only means that was actually a conversation to begin with.

That any of us — and we’re not just talking fans, but national media, even — were talking Big Dance is remarkable considering Powell hasn’t been available. Despite not having an athletic, 6-foot-8 scoring option and very little inside production, Anderson still has  the Razorbacks just a game out of the SEC Tournament’s No. 4 seed with four games remaining in the regular season. With the way they have been playing of late it seems much more likely they remain in the No. 8 or 9 range where they sit now.

Still, it’s hard to believe they have been good enough – without Powell — to be as close as they are to a potential bye in the SEC Tournament’s opening round. In case you’ve forgotten just what he meant to the team, Powell was averaging 19.5 points and 6.0 rebounds per game after beginning the year as a pre-season All-SEC second-team pick.

Think the Razorbacks couldn’t use him shooting 71.4 percent right now? Of all the issues we’ve seen from the team this year the lack of a consistent inside threat has been the most consistent weak spot.