Men's Basketball Hosts North Florida Tuesday in BWA
Game Notes (PDF) | Coach Anderson Press Conference
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Arkansas men’s basketball team (5-5) goes right back to work Tuesday evening, welcoming the North Florida Ospreys (10-4) to town for a 7 p.m. tip-off inside Bud Walton Arena.
Tip-off: Tuesday, 7 p.m. CT
Location: Bud Walton Arena
Tickets: Buy Here
TV: SEC Network + | WatchESPN
The Opponent
• The Ospreys, from Jacksonville, Florida, play in the Atlantic Sun (A-Sun) Conference and are 10-4 on the season. North Florida has won four consecutive games, all at home, scoring 80-plus points in each of those games. In all, the Ospreys are 7-0 at UNF Arena and 3-4 away from home; the losses were at Louisville, Saint Louis, LSU and Dayton. North Florida’s most notable win came vs. Illinois, a 93-81 neutral-site win in the season opener.
• North Florida is the most deadly three-point shooting team in the nation, averaging 13.1 made threes per game (1st), while shooting 44.6 percent from beyond the arc (4th). Six Ospreys average at least one made trey per contest, with Trent Mackey and Beau Beech leading the way. Mackey leads the team with a 50-for-95 (52.6 percent) mark from deep, while Beech is second on the club with a 45-for-94 (47.9 percent) total on three-pointers. But while Beech averages 15.6 points and Mackey adds 13.1, Dallas Moore leads the team with 19.9 per game. Overall, North Florida scores 86.5 points (9th) as a team and has scored 100-plus three times in 14 contests.
• Head coach Matthew Driscoll is in his seventh season with the Ospreys, with a record of 106-104 (.505) in six-plus seasons. A Pittsburgh native, Driscoll got his first head-coaching gig at La Roche College in 1993. After four years with the Redhawks, he bounced around as an assistant coach before heading to Baylor as an assistant from 2003-09. With Driscoll’s help, the Bears vaulted into national contention and he was hired by the Ospreys in 2009. North Florida won its first A-Sun title in 2014-15 with a 12-2 conference record and advanced to the NCAA Tournament, finishing the year at 23-12 overall.
#Fastest40 Facts
• Dusty Hannahs, Anthlon Bell and Moses Kingsley is the only trio in the country to score double figures in all 10 games this season.
• Arkansas has never played North Florida, but is 4-0 all-time against current teams in the Atlantic Sun Conference. Arkansas last played an A-Sun school on November 11, 2011, defeating USC Upstate 83-63 in Mike Anderson’s first game as head coach of the Razorbacks.
• Arkansas has won 29 of its last 30 non-conference games in BWA, including an astounding 44-1 mark under Anderson against unranked non-SEC teams.
• Jabril Durham is one of four players in the country with four double-digit assist games this season. He has four of the seven double-digit assist performances in the SEC this year and ranks No. 4 in the nation with 7.8 assists per game.
• Arkansas’ last four opponents have entered the game with a combined record of 32-9 (Evansville: 7-1, Tennessee Tech: 7-2,
Mercer: 8-2, North Florida: 10-4).
• Moses Kingsley is one of 29 players in the country averaging a double-double and one of 16 individuals averaging a double-double with 15-plus points per game this season.
• After one double-double in his first two years, Kingsley has six in the first 10 games of the year, including a career-high 14 rebounds last Saturday against Mercer.
• Anthlon Bell (31) and Dusty Hannahs (28) are the No. 1 three-point shooting tandem in the SEC, combining to sink 59 treys through nine games for 5.9 makes per contest.
• There have been seven double-digit assist performances in the SEC this year, and Jabril Durham is responsible for four of them. He ranks No. 4 in the country with 7.8 assists per game and is the only conference player with multiple double-digit assist games this season.
Up Next
After an eight-day break for the holidays, Arkansas travels to the University of Dayton for a 7 p.m. tip-off with the Flyers on CBS Sports Network.
For more information on Arkansas men’s basketball, follow @RazorbackMBB on Twitter.
