FAYETTEVILLE - Bret Bielema knew soon after he took the Arkansas head coaching job what was on the Razorbacks’ schedule between Sept. 21 and Oct. 19.

A difficult road game at Rutgers, followed by SEC games against Texas A&M, Florida, South Carolina and Alabama - all preseason top 10 selections in The Associated Press Top 25 poll - were games four through eight on Arkansas’ 2013 schedule.

Arkansas will take a 3-3 record and a three-game losing streak into Saturday’s 11:21 a.m. homecoming game against South Carolina, and Bielema approached the week with a chipper outlook Monday.

“I know this: If I’m down today, the players are going to be down,” he said. “If I’m negative Nellie tomorrow, they’ll be negative Nellie as well. So, the lead that we take as coaches hopefully will drive our players, and to be quite honest, when you get older in life, it’s good to be around the youth. They tend to bring you back a little bit quicker, a little bit stronger, so that’s what we’ll rely on.”

After its 3-0 start, Arkansas had a 24-7 lead in the third quarter at Rutgers before the punt return unit and quarterback Gary Nova rallied the Scarlet Knights to a 28-24 victory.

Arkansas’ offense performed well in its 45-33 shootout loss to No. 10 Texas A&M, and the Razorbacks were more competitive than the score indicated in last week’s 30-10 loss at No. 18 Florida.

“You know, we’ve lost three games that we prepared to win,” Bielema said. “Went out and played very, very well early on, didn’t close out the games the way we wanted. Winning is a process. It’s a process to get through a four-quarter game, and we’re getting there.”

While the Razorbacks can point to program-building moments the past three weeks, they understand the bottom line is three losses in a row with two more SEC powers on deck before the Hogs’ first of two open dates.

“We can’t think about the three that we just lost,” senior Kiero Small said. “We’ve got to focus on the next one.”

Bielema’s longest losing streak as a head coach came in his third season at Wisconsin in 2008, when the Badgers won their first three games before losing four in a row to Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Iowa.

The Hogs’ current slide is reminiscent of that run based on the quality of opponents.

“Any given loss can take a team down a path that’s very hard to come off,” Bielema said. “The semantics might be a little bit different, but you learn something in every ball game.

“I’m going to say it a thousand times: Winning is a process, and the process needs to be learned. And they understand it, they’re getting it a little bit more each and every day.”

Arkansas players went through stretches last year with losing streaks of four and three games in the course of a 4-8 season. The Razorbacks are young and/ or inexperienced at multiple positions like quarterback, tailback and linebacker, and most analysts projected they would struggle through this portion of their schedule.

Staying positive and finding nuggets of improvement are key to the Razorbacks’ growth.

“Just move forward, that’s one thing me being a captain I’m going to tell the young guys,” senior defensive end Chris Smith said. “Hey, we’ve got an SEC opponent … South Carolina coming in. We’ve got to move forward. … I know we’re 3-3, but there’s still more football left.”

Arkansas defensive coordinator Chris Ash, who has not been one to parse words in evaluating his unit’s performances, said he “absolutely” saw improvement last week.

“We stressed stopping the run a lot this last week because of Florida’s run game, and I thought we did a pretty good job of that,” Ash said, noting the Razorbacks held Florida to 115 rushing yards, 96 yards less than the Gators’ per-game average. “So I was happy with that, and for a couple of other reasons. We had fewer misalignments, fewer mental mistakes. We played more physical and got off blocks better, and the result was a better effort.”

Bielema and both coordinators said they couldn’t fault the players’ efforts, an affliction that affected last year’s team.

“We played hard,” offensive coordinator Jim Chaney said. “We’ve just got to continue to play smarter. It seems like on about every play in the second half, nine or 10 guys would be executing the play the way we wanted and one guy would break down or get beat.

“It’s just kind of who we were in that second half. It was disappointing, but you can’t hide from the video. We’ve got to go on and try to get better.”

Bielema gave an indication Monday as to how the Razorbacks will begin reversing their current trend.

“Each week I can see gains as a head coach to get to where we need to be, we’re just not in that mode yet where we can do it against a quality, ranked opponent,” he said. “You really get an appreciation for just staying healthy, being able to survive and advance.

“Obviously it takes a certain - I don’t know if it’s an emphasis - but a certain agenda in recruiting to get the depth that we need at certain positions to sustain what we need to do in the SEC.”

Sports, Pages 19 on 10/09/2013