FAYETTEVILLE -- Statistically identical twins Arkansas and Tennessee are identical no more.
Start to finish, Arkansas thumped Tennessee 85-67 Saturday night at Walton Arena, both entering with 11-11 overall and 4-5 Southeastern Conference records.
Arkansas, its conference record even and season mark above .500, goes to Mississippi State Tuesday night while Tennessee sports losing marks in both categories when Auburn visits Knoxville Wednesday night.
"We got outplayed from the start," first-year Vols coach Rick Barnes said. "Give Arkansas credit. Mike (Anderson) does a terrific job. They could do pretty much what they wanted whenever they wanted and beat us every way you could beat us. They beat us at both ends."
Arkansas coach Anderson said the Vols just happened to catch his team at its best.
"Our defense was good," Anderson said. "And we shot the ball well and we shared the basketball and our bench was really big."
The Vols were coming off a mammoth upset of No. 20 Kentucky in Knoxville but were flattened start to finish Saturday even without Arkansas star 6-10 center Moses Kingsley at the start.
With Kingsley recently incurring two technical fouls, Anderson started senior Willy Kouassi in the big man's place for the first 7:58 of clock time.
Kingsley, among those on the watch list for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award voted annually to college basketball's outstanding big man, made the most of his minutes. He led Arkansas with 17 points, five rebounds and blocked a shot.
"I have got to learn not to get too emotional sometimes during the game," Kingsley said. "It started with him getting a point across and I got the point."
Anderson concurred.
"I think a message was served and he is ready to move forward," Anderson said. "He's a target now and people are going to try to get under his skin and you have to go wit the flow and play above that."
Meanwhile. Kouassi helped the Hogs to a 12-2 start.
"It was one of our better defensive performances starting with Willy Kouassi," Anderson said. "He was an energizer."
Arkansas starting guards Dusty Hannahs and Anthlon Bell scored 13 and 12 points, respectively, while reserve guards Anton Beard and Jimmy Whitt scored 12 and 10 with Whitt hitting a couple of threes.
Razorback reserve forwards Trey Thompson and Keaton Miles each blocked three shots.
Though limited to zero field goals and four first-half points, Tennessee scoring machine guard Kevin Punter heated up in the second half to finish with a game-high 24 points, one above his 23.1 average. Starting Vols forward Armani Moore scored 11 while reserve Shembari Phillips scored his 12 points in the second half.
The Razorbacks controlled their 36-23 first half from Hannahs' three-pointer opening the scoring at 19:26 to Kingsley's old-fashioned field goal and one three-point play concluding the first-half scoring with 39 seconds left.
Kouassi did his part for openers contributing a tip-in, two rebounds and a deflection leading to a basket before exiting for Kingsley with Arkansas up 12-2.
Other than connecting one for five free throws as the team went 2 for 9 from the first-half charity stripe, Kingsley responded off the bench with 11 first-half points and three boards.
Arkansas twice peaked its lead at 16, 23-7 at 8:59 and 25-9 at 7:42.
Tennessee trailed as much as 24 during the second half.
Bell's deuce and trey opening the second stanza quickly showed the Vols their next chance for revenge would be Feb. 27 hosting the Hogs in a SEC rematch at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville.
Sports on 02/08/2016