In 50 minutes of game action against Alabama on Feb. 18, Arkansas’ 6-foot-3 guard Darius Acuff Jr. ended all doubt as to who will win the SEC’s Freshman of the Year award. While he was at it, he placed himself squarely in the picture for the league’s Player of the Year honor.
Acuff’s stat line in what was probably the SEC season’s best game — won by Alabama, 117-115 in double-overtime — looks like a computer malfunction. In those 50 minutes, Acuff hoisted 27 shots, 16 of which he made, including 6 of 10 from three-point range. He was 11 of 12 from the free-throw line, handed out 5 assists and grabbed 7 rebounds. The craziest stat, though, was this: Despite all that, his plus-minus for the game was -2.
Crazier still is the fact that two days before the game, Acuff, who is leading the SEC in scoring (22.2 points per game) and assists (6.2), was in a walking boot. When Razorbacks coach John Calipari, Acuff responded briefly.
“Are you nuts?” Acuff said.
Acuff knew what he was capable of, nagging injury or not. His 49 points were the most in the country this season and set a handful of records — the most by a freshman against a team ranked in the Associated Press Top 25, the most by an Arkansas freshman, and the most scored by any Razorback in an SEC game. With another basket, he could have tied the Hogs’ record of 51, set by Rotnei Clarke against Alcorn State in 2009.
After the game, Acuff was less than thrilled with his performance.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Acuff said. “We lost. However many I had, we lost. I wish I could take the loss back.”
Afterward, Calipari handed out the highest of praise for Acuff, one in a long line of great guards he’s coached since joining the SEC in 2009 at Kentucky.
“His body language, his ability to make everyone better, his will to win,” Calipari said. “I’ve coached some really good guards over the years, and he’s right there with them. He’s unique and special.”
Acuff — who has scored 20 or more points in nine straight games — has been dominating in SEC play. He’s won a league-record seven SEC Freshman of the Week awards, and this week also added the SEC Player of the Week award. Acuff and Tennessee’s Nate Ament — six Freshman of the Week honors to go with a Player of the Week award — are the only freshmen in league history to win seven or more weekly honors in a season.
Mississippi State’s Hubbard erupts for his own massive scoring game
On the same night Acuff went for 49, Mississippi State guard Josh Hubbard nearly matched him with 46 in a 91-85 win over Auburn. What’s even more impressive about Hubbard’s big night was that 35 of his points came in the first half. He made nine three-pointers in the first 20 minutes. Not since 2020 has a Division-I player scored 35 or more points in a single half.
Like Acuff, Hubbard just missed a school record — Bulldog legend Bailey Howell scored 47 points in the 1958-59 season. Also like Acuff, Hubbard’s line in the box score looked like something out of a video game — in 39 minutes he hoisted 27 shots and made 15, including 10 of 15 from three. He also grabbed 9 rebounds, handed out 3 assists and made 2 steals.
Hubbard has always been a scoring point guard — he averaged 17.1 and 18.9 points in his first two years — but this season, he’s been asked to shoulder an even bigger offensive load for the Bulldogs, who are ranked 102nd in KenPom.com’s offensive efficiency, averaging 113.9 points per 100 possessions. They’re also 262nd in three-point percentage (32.5), and 341st in free-throw percentage (67.0). It’s little wonder Hubbard’s usage rate, per KenPom, is 31.4 percent, No. 27 in the country. He’s also No. 12 in the percentage of shots taken for his team (33.3).
After that 46-point outburst, State coach Chris Jans talked about a sort of superstition he has when Hubbard gets on a heater.
“He’s been different lately,” Jans said. “He’s got a buoyancy about him, and he’s got a giddy up in his step. I don’t know exactly why. Sometimes with him, it’s like pitching a perfect game, and I don’t want to talk to him. I literally try to stay away from him other than scheme and what we need to talk about. I didn’t want to talk about it at halftime with any of the coaches either.”
Jans might not want to talk to Hubbard, but he’s certainly willing to talk to everyone else about him.
“That kid, obviously, is super special,” Jans said. “He keeps showing me ways to continue to talk about him. For instance, late in the game, he says, ‘Coach, you’ve got to use me as a decoy for a couple of plays.’ He knows his body. It takes a lot of energy and torque to do some of the things that he does.”
This Year's NCAA Tournament Cinderella? It's Likely One of These Teams.
With March Madness fast approaching, we rank the ten bubble teams with the potential to go the distance in the Tournament
Around the Rim
• Florida (22-6, 13-2) all but secured the SEC regular-season championship with a win at Texas on Wednesday night. It was the Gators’ eighth consecutive victory and seventh SEC road win in succession.
One of the reasons Florida has been such a tough out in SEC play is the return to form of Alex Condon, who received several preseason All-America honors but was a bit slow out of the gate. Against Texas, his game-high 23 points marked his third straight 20-plus points game. He shows no signs of slowing down.
“I’ve found a rhythm these last few games,” Condon said after the Texas game. “My teammates are getting me the ball and trusting me to make the right plays. I didn’t feel like I forced anything tonight and just let the game come to me.”
• Tennessee guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie is putting together an All-SEC season (18.1 points, 5.4 assists and 1.9 steals per game). His shot selection has been questionable at times, and he’s committed a couple of turnovers he’d probably part with some of his NIL money to get back — most notably in a homecourt loss to Kentucky. But on Feb. 18 against Oklahoma, he put together one of the best floor games in school history. He scored 18 points and handed out 8 assists, but his program-record 8 steals, pardon the pun, stole the show.
Gillespie’s previous career high for steals, set when he was playing for Belmont, was seven, and coincidentally, that was the former Tennessee record held by six players — Kennedy Chandler (Nov. 30, 2021, against Presbyterian), Vincent Yarbrough (Dec. 22, 1998, against UNC Greensboro), LaMarcus Golden (Dec. 28, 1993, against Mercer), Clarence Swearengen (Dec. 20, 1988, against UAB and March 11, 1988, against Florida), Dale Ellis (Jan. 20, 1982, at Mississippi State) and Terry Crosby (Jan. 11, 1977, against Florida).
• The SEC fined Kentucky coach Mark Pope $25,000 for comments he made after a Feb. 21 loss to Auburn, which won on Elyjah Freeman’s tip-in with 1.1 seconds to play. It wasn’t the tip-in that set Pope off; rather it was an offensive foul call against Collin Chandler that gave the Tigers the ball and a chance to win.
But Pope didn’t criticize the officials or the call. Not directly anyway, as he explained to the media how his team had to stay focused even as things had become, as he put it, “personal.”
“We refuse to give control to people that are outside of our program. Refuse,” Pope said after the loss. “Regardless of how personal it might get or how bad it might get, we refuse to give control to fans, to give control to anybody else associated with this game. Regardless of how blatantly people are trying to make this not happen, we refuse to give them our power…We don’t make excuses. We don’t do that. Regardless of what is happening. Regardless of how disgraceful things are, we don’t give away our power. Regardless of how embarrassing, personal, awful, unacceptable things are, we refuse to give away our power.”
Some might interpret that as a veiled reference to outside forces — officials, maybe? — working against Kentucky’s success. But that’s probably not why Pope was fined. A hot mic picked up a comment he made to Kentucky director of athletics Mitch Barnhart as soon as he left the podium.
“Mitch, if those mother ——- try to fine me, screw ’em because I did not say a word about how they cheated us,” Pope said.
In the SEC’s announcement of Pope’s fine, it said he had violated “SEC Bylaw 10.5.3 (Sportsmanship) and the SEC Commissioner’s Regulation regarding Public Criticism of Officials, which prohibit coaches, student-athletes and institutional staff from publicly criticizing officials or disclosing officiating-related communications.”
• Former Oklahoma star Buddy Hield never got to play in the SEC — his last year was 2016, eight years before the Sooners joined the league — but he left an indelible mark on the program and the Big 12. During halftime of the Sooners’ game against Texas A&M on Feb. 21, the school retired his No. 24 jersey.
Hield would have loved playing in the SEC, and chances are good he would have fared just as well as he did in the Big 12, where he twice won the league’s Player of the Year Award. In his final season, 2016, Hield was a first-team All-American and led the Sooners to the Final Four. He averaged 25 points and shot 45.7 percent from three.
Hield joins a small group of Sooners whose jerseys hang in the rafters at the Lloyd Noble Center: Alvan Adams, Wayman Tisdale, Blake Griffin, Stacey King and Mookie Blaylock.
Games to Watch
Vanderbilt at Kentucky, Saturday (ESPN)
The Commodores wiped out the Wildcats in the first meeting between these schools a month ago. Kentucky will be looking to avenge that loss and try to play its way back into contention for a double bye into next month’s SEC Tournament after a shaky stretch where it lost three in a row to Florida, Georgia and Auburn.
Alabama at Tennessee, Saturday (ESPN)
Tennessee beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa last month in a notable game that featured the short-lived return of center Charles Bediako after playing his last college game in 2023, and a noticeable emergence of the Vols’ freshman sensation, Nate Ament, who scored a game-high 29 points. Alabama played without guards Aden Holloway and Amari Allen in that game. Their return will help, but the Vols are hard to deal with in Knoxville and have beaten the Crimson Tide in five consecutive games.
Arkansas at Florida, Saturday (SEC Network)
It’s never easy to win at Florida, but if the Razorbacks hope to grab a share of the SEC regular-season championship, this is a must-win game.
Meet your guide
