Published: Saturday, December 26, 2020
FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas guard Desi Sills set the tone in the Razorbacks’ win over Abilene Christian on Tuesday.
In the game’s first four minutes, the junior scored seven points, grabbed two defensive rebounds and recorded a steal. He poured in a team-high 16 points in 14 first-half minutes, leading Arkansas to a 47-31 lead at the break.
Sills only scored once in the second half against the Wildcats, but his fingerprints remained all over the Razorbacks’ eighth win of the season. He was a team-best plus-18 when in the lineup.
“He's kind of been our anchor all year,” Arkansas associate head coach David Patrick said. “He moves the ball and when he gets his feet set he can knock down the open 3. And he did a great job cutting behind their defense.
“They do a great job of denying the wings defensively. Desi’s cutting off the ball and being able to finish at the rim really got us going there in the first half.”
Sills will enter Southeastern Conference play next week at Auburn in the midst of the second-best scoring stretch of his college career. He has reached double figures in Arkansas’ last four games, averaging 15.5 points on 51.2% shooting and 38.8% from 3-point range.
As a sophomore, Sills averaged 16 points and hit 57.1% of his 3-point attempts over a four-game run against Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia and LSU in the back half of the SEC schedule.
In combating his struggles from the perimeter to begin the 2019-20 season, Sills found his offense by relentlessly attacking the lane. Through eight games last year, he scored 24 times at the rim on 37 attempts. In the first month of this season, he is 25 of 39 at the rim while also shooting the 3 at an effective rate.
“Desi brings it every day,” Patrick said. “He’s one of the first ones in the gym and last to leave, and it kind of carries over to your game. When you work hard, I think good things can happen. He doesn’t hunt shots.
“He just lets the ball come to him.”
In the Razorbacks’ last four games, lineups featuring Sills scored at a 1.15 point-per-possession clip and allowed .83 PPP over 220 possessions, according to HoopLens analytics. Arkansas’ offensive turnover rate spiked to 19.8% when he sat.
That figure was 13.2% with Sills on the floor. He has committed only 11 turnovers in 211 minutes, the third most on the team behind freshman Moses Moody and graduate transfer Justin Smith.
The junior has also been impressive on the defensive end, tallying seven steals over the last four games. According to KenPom data, Sills is recording a steal on 3.8% of opponents’ possessions when on the floor, which ranks 11th among SEC players who have played at least 40% of their team’s available minutes this season.
Sills, too, blocked a shot in three consecutive games against Southern, Central Arkansas and Oral Roberts. He had five in his career prior to this season.
Sills holds a defensive rating — an estimate of points allowed per 100 possessions — of 83.0, according to Sports Reference. It is the second-best mark on the team among rotation regulars (Connor Vanover, 72.6).
“Desi does more than just shoot the ball,” said Moody, who leads the Razorbacks in scoring at 16.9 per game. “He can get into the lane, get us a lot of FTAs, so he's going to get to the line and draw the defense and kick out and create. He can do it all.
“His stat line doesn't just stop with scoring.”
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December 26, 2020 at 06:01PM
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'He can do it all': Sills an anchor for Arkansas - WholeHogSports
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