Sam Pittman discusses loss to LSU

After another heart-breaking loss to No. 12 LSU, Arkansas finds themselves 2-2 through their first four games. Untimely penalties, offensive line troubles, and poor game management have been a thorn in the team’s side. Apart from a much improved OL, tonight was no different.

Sam Pittman and select players sat down with media for the post-game press conference to discuss the loss against LSU.

Effort and Fight

“You can’t watch the Hogs tonight and not be pleased with the effort and their fight,” said Pittman. Jaheim Thomas echo the sentiment later saying, “just great effort, man. We fought our hearts out. We played until the end of the whistle.”

Pittman later went on to talk about the adversities (much of them self-inflected) Arkansas faced and how they kept the game close despite it. “We ran out of timeout. We couldn’t get a play called. We couldn’t get it ran. [The referees] stood over the ball quite a length at times.”

Letting LSU score

At the end of the game, LSU was within the Arkansas 10-yard line with less than two minutes left in the game. Arkansas had zero timeouts left. Instead of letting LSU score, Pittman continued to play defense. It led to the Tigers running out the clock and scoring the game winning field goal with 5 seconds left.

“Before somebody asks, ‘did I think about letting them score?’ Yes, but I don’t think they would’ve,” said Pittman. “We talked about it because I was out of timeouts. Then I decided to come all out and try to jar a fumble. So, we went after them…

“I thought out chances would be better off at that point with no timeouts, trying to jar it lose and/or block or miss a field goal.”

The offense

The OL play has been the biggest talking point on social media. Pittman, however, thought he saw a lot of improvement from the big guys up front. “There was a sack or maybe two that I thought had plenty [of time to throw]… we just couldn’t get anybody open and we kinda held the ball a little bit because KJ was trying to make the play.

“But I thought [the OL] got good push. I thought R-Dub was huge tonight. Obviously, Luke Hasz is a ball playing son of a gun.”

Dubinion had 15 carries for 78 yards and averaged 5.3 yards per carry. Hasz (for the second game in a row) broke out. He had six receptions for 116 yards and two touchdowns. He averaged 19.3 yards per reception.

The defense

It was a tale of two half for the defense. In the first half, Arkansas held LSU to just 3 point for most of the half. A three play, 75-yard drive for an LSU touchdown was their only blemish. “I thought we played a good half on defense, or a good almost half on defense,” said Pittman. “We got to get some things figured out defensively because we didn’t stop them in the second half”

For what happened later in the game, Pittman had this to say, “They ran the ball more in the second half than they did in the first half… They kicked us pretty hard there in the first drive. They went for about forty on a run on us.”

Pittman believes that the Tigers’ newfound rushing attack hindered Arkansas’ ability to rush LSU QB Jaylen Daniels. “I think that their ability to run the ball slowed our pass rush down a little bit… We couldn’t get pressure and their backs blocked well, too.”

Steadfast confidence

Pittman still has confidence in his team despite the loss. “I believe we’re gonna win the damn rest of them [future games]. We may not, but we got a good football team.”

The team is so close to putting together a complete performance. With a few less penalties and better in-game decisions, Arkansas could very well be 4 and 0.

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