The University of Arkansas at Little Rock men's basketball team heads into the final weekend of the regular season in the midst of a six-game losing streak, swept three weekends in a row.
The Trojans have failed to win consecutive games since Jan. 1-2, and the last time UALR scored eclipsed 70 points in a game was on Jan. 9, six weeks and 12 conference games ago.
The preseason Sun Belt Conference favorites have looked anything but since early January, yet Trojans Coach Darrell Walker is still holding out hope.
"I've told my staff, and I'm telling my guys that we haven't played well yet," Walker said. "We haven't had the consistency of playing well night in and night out. But it has to be there somewhere because it hasn't come out all year. Hopefully it comes out at the right time."
UALR (10-13, 6-10 Sun Belt) hosts Louisiana-Lafayette (15-7, 9-6) at the Jack Stephens Center today and Saturday starved for a streak-snapping win ahead of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament, which begins March 5 in Pensacola, Fla. The Trojans sit fifth in the Sun Belt West Division entering the weekend, 1 1/2 games behind Texas-Arlington in fourth place with two games to play.
The final games against the Ragin' Cajuns will close a regular season that has fallen below expectations for Walker and the Trojans.
UALR was selected to finish atop the Sun Belt in the preseason coaches poll and appeared poised to defend its 2019-20 regular-season title after a conference-opening sweep of Texas-Arlington on Jan. 1-2. But the Trojans played .500 for the remainder of January and have yet to win a game in the month of February.
The current six-game losing streak began on Feb. 5-6 at Texas State, after which junior Markquis Nowell opted out of the remainder of the season, and the winless spell roared on last weekend with a pair of defeats at Louisiana-Monroe, a team the Trojans swept at the end of January.
"It's been really tough," senior Ruot Monyyong said. "Nobody has been joking around, laughing as much. Everybody is just quiet."
When UALR stormed to the regular season title last season, its 73.2 points per game ranked No, 4 in the Sun Belt, and the Trojans' 34.6% shooting from three-point range was second only to Georgia State.
That offensive firepower has been missing for UALR in 2020-21, and particularly of late. The Trojans are ninth in scoring, averaging 69.4 points per game, and sit 10th in the 12-team league hitting 31.7% of their three-points shots.
Over its last six games, UALR is shooting 44.2% from the field -- below its season-average of 46.3% -- and has shot under 30% from beyond the three-point line three times. Without Nowell, outside shooting has fallen to senior guard Ben Coupet Jr., and junior C.J. White and sophomore Marko Lukic have also played increased minutes, but the Trojans are still searching for answers.
"They have to make shots because I can't shoot for them," Walker said. "They've got to make shots. My guys on the perimeter have to make shots. They understand that. They haven't made them consistently at all. Hopefully it clicks at the right time."
The series with Louisiana-Lafayette offers the Trojans two chances to end the skid before the conference tournament at the end of a winless month.
The Ragin' Cajuns come to Little Rock with the Sun Belt's third-leading scorer in senior Cedric Russell (18.1 PPG) and junior Theo Akwuba, who paces the conference with 2.7 blocks per game, and arrive hanging onto a one game lead for second-place in the West ahead of Arkansas State University. The teams split a pair of contentious contests on Jan. 8-9, beginning with a two-point loss when the lights went out on UALR in the Cajundome and ending with the Trojans' 78-76 overtime win in the second game of the weekend.
The Trojans still looked like conference contenders then, and Walker hopes Louisiana-Lafayette can pull that out of his team once again, helping place UALR back on track before the postseason.
"My mindset is still the same," Walker said. "I think we're a very dangerous basketball team. I don't think any coach down there in Pensacola, Florida, is going to say they want to play Little Rock first."