Homecoming was ho-hum for Arkansas, but it was a shutout victory, too, and as this agonizing season has worn on, even a fairly uninspired performance by one objectively bad team to oust another means a little around these parts.

What the 23-0 blanking of Tulsa may not really encapsulate, though, is what it might eventually symbolize as a minor pivot point for the program. For starters, Chad Morris’ offense was anything but hyper-productive, but the guys who produced are the ones he’s going to be leaning on quite a bit in the future if this program is going to make a quick, emphatic turnaround from its present moribund state. Rakeem Boyd proved he could be a workhorse just as much as a big-play threat, carrying a season-high 22 times for 99 yards before being sidelined again with a minor injury. Freshman quarterback Connor Noland got his first career start, and was by no means dynamic but steady enough to get a win (10 of 16 with 124 yards, a touchdown, and an opening-drive interception that might’ve been at least partially the fault of slanting senior receiver Jared Cornelius, who has all but disappeared from the game plan). Another freshman, redshirt tailback Maleek Williams, got the Hogs’ second touchdown on a short run late in the game and showed a willingness to hit the line aggressively.

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On the defensive side, McTelvin Agim had one of his better games and constantly found himself in the Tulsa backfield, a sight that many expected to materialize more consistently, but the Southwest Arkansas product continues to battle against double-teams and some flagrant, mostly unflagged holding calls to be more of a force this season than he was in either of his first two years. He and Briston Guidry will be good anchors on the line next fall, to be sure, and it was encouraging to see the Arkansas secondary have a nice performance after being thoroughly torched by Ole Miss quarterback Jordan Ta’amu the week before. It was the first Razorback shutout in four years, and even if it came at the expense of an inferior foe, it was a psychologically pleasing way to close out a team that pushed Texas to the brink a month earlier and challenged a very good Houston team for three-and-a-half quarters.

Of course, Tulsa is still just a 1-6 team, and Arkansas is now an utterly pedestrian 2-6 after snapping the program’s longest losing streak in four years. These Hogs still don’t have a win over an SEC or Power-5 conference opponent, their already-scant depth has been nearly obliterated by two or three weeks’ worth of unwelcome injuries to critical contributors, and they have failed to punctuate at least two other potential victories. So how much can it mean for the team to mildly drub the Golden Hurricane? The consensus will always be that an ugly win beats a well-played defeat at any juncture, but that last leg of the schedule really looks like it could be much more dangerous than it originally appeared. LSU is rolling, Mississippi State remains dangerous despite its offensive woes of late, and Missouri is always dangerous with its vertical attack.

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Consider that the next opponent, Vanderbilt, is a team that more or less is in desperation mode, too. Coach Derek Mason is assuredly fighting for his job at this point, with the Commodores having fiercely challenged the likes of Notre Dame, Florida and Kentucky, all teams residing within the Top 15, but losing all of those games in painfully close fashion. If Vandy (3-5, 0-4) saunters into Fayetteville and loses, it almost certainly cements Mason’s fate, whereas Morris is essentially playing with what little house money he has in his first tour through the conference. Accordingly, expect a hungry Vanderbilt team with a productive, experienced quarterback and a relatively stingy defense to treat this game with significant urgency.

Arkansas, meanwhile, is faced with its fourth pre-noon kickoff in nine games this fall, and given the team’s dearth of success, that means Saturday’s crowd won’t figure to be all that electric. The Tulsa game was, at least, a sunny homecoming game with onetime Clemson quarterback Kelly Bryant in attendance for his official visit. Hard to fathom what fan turnout will be, but the typically generous estimate of the Tulsa crowd as being nearly 57,000 strong (but 40,000 tickets scanned at the gates) is probable to repeat itself again for Vanderbilt, and that’s not a sizable group to show up for a league game that still has a lot of importance for both teams.

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