Yesterday Razorback Expats commenter and occasional contributor J. Hawg 3 treated us to part 1 of his evaluation of this hits and misses of the Hogs’ preseason conventional wisdom. It somehow managed to be hilarious, insightful and depressing all at the same time. Continuing with that theme, here’s part 2:

6. Houston Dale is going to have a pretty darn good season at Ole Miss, and they’ll love him for a year or two. RIGHT. He was left with a stable full of studs lacking leadership and motivation. That’s HDN’s cup o’ tea. Also his cup o’ tea: losing embarrassingly to Vanderbilt, then beating Florida in the Swamp. Get used to it, Rebels.

7. Our freshmen wide receivers and running backs are going to be awesome. WRONG. With the receivers, it is easy to see why they are not producing, because futility, thy name is Dick. The running backs, well, were we just misled about Curtis and Johnson? I thought they were bona fide recruits. So far, not.

8. No way we lose to Nutt & Ole Miss or Malzahn & Tulsa; I mean, no F’ing way. WAY. In fact, does anyone think we stand a chance against those two teams? Anyone besides those folks who forgot to take their meds? Nutt has a better team, and he will be totally motivated. We will still be reeling from weeks of getting pounded into crumbly bits of cookie. Malzahn has a similar score to settle, a high-octane offense, and our defense, well, have I mentioned our defense? It really blows.

9. We will get beat up pretty good in Murderer’s Row, but will still manage to win 5 or 6 games. PLEASE, SEE YOUR DOCTOR. We have won all of the games we are going to win, with the possible and remote exceptions of Kentucky and Mississippi State. Since both are on the road at stadiums where even good Hog teams have sputtered, I say no way.

10. Yeah, we might look bad now, but give Petrino time and he’ll show he was a good choice. RIGHT. I’m still drinking that Kool-Aid. You know, even in the midst of getting killed, we still seem to have more imagination on offense that we did in the entire Nutt Decade. I think he needs to fire Willy Robinson. Maybe even do it right now. But I have hope that eventually he will recruit the right players for his system and get them all on the same page and we’ll be vastly improved. This awful season is the price we have to pay. I look for a strong rebound sometime in the third quarter of 2010.

11. Vanderbilt is going to be 4-0 and in the lead in the SEC East after five weeks. RIGHT. As in “Right, no one ever said that.” But go ‘Dores. If my Hogs are gonna spend some time in purgatory, at least I have my Vanderbilt. At least until they get around to playing all the good teams in the SEC East. A man can dream, can’t he?

Now that the first month of the football season is mercifully behind us, it seemed like a good time to turn the floor over to one of our favorite commenters, the illustrious J. Hawg 3, for his analysis of the carnage so far. In this two part series, J. Hawg revisits the preseason conventional wisdom about the Razorbacks to see where the experts were right and where they were horribly wrong. So, sit down, get comfortable, remove any sharp objects from the room and read on (and stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow):

As we near the midway point in this, the Dark Season of Distress, I decided to go back and revisit all the conventional wisdoms that I and most of my cohorts adopted going into this year. Here they are, My Hogs, Right or Wrong:

1. Under Bobby Petrino, Casey Dick will become a more effective quarterback. WRONG. (And when I say “wrong,” think of Dom DeLuise screaming it in “Blazing Saddles.”) Though he showed early signs of playing with more confidence, under duress he’s the same guy who cannot progress through reads, and sometimes throws to his imaginary friend in the flat. Frankly, his performance has been a bigger disappointment than the government’s regulatory oversight of the financial markets. Only one other quarterback in the league has underperformed as badly, that being the Vols’ Jonathon Crompton, and he’s heading for the bench. Look for Casey to be there by the Auburn game. I mean, those two pick-sixes against Bama were possibly the worst throws made anywhere in the country at any point this season. Vol fans may disagree.

2. It is going to be a tough year, and it will look like a Chinese Fire Drill the first few games. RIGHT. So right it hurts. Holy cow, these guys look terrible. We got fooled by the first two games, in which it at least looked like we could move the ball when we absolutely had to. The last two games have proved us to be inept on offense against competition that requires us to block, and a gaping sieve akin to the Egyptian army in the Sinai on defense. We look dazed and confused on both sides of the ball.

3. But Petrino will have them playing better by the end of the season. UH, MAYBE. Okay, so there have been flashes. For a couple of series against a very good Alabama defense, we actually moved the ball. And that 4th and 1 TD call was brilliant. But face it, when your season highlight is moving the ball a little bit on the wrong side of a blowout, you have a long, long way to go.

4. Our offensive and defensive lines will be the strength of the team. WRONG. I have no explanation for this. The O-line should be blowing people off the line. We’re savvy, experienced, have a Remington Award-winning center. Sure, the Black Hole that is Terence Cody was a load. But explain the total disintegration against Texas. What was that, like seven sacks? In one game? Are you kidding? And the defensive has been, well, abysmal. (See Egyptian tank comparison above.) The worst performance I have ever seen by a Razorback team in forty years. Now, our D line was not really that good to begin with, but they should have been tolerable. More and more, it looks like the last-second hiring of Willy Robinson was a gigantic mistake. Even with this lack of talent, even Reggie Herring would have them doing, um, something. Even if it was just catching spit as he cussed them out. Or blitzing every down. And remember who Petrino hired but then lost to the Ol’ Ball Coach? Ellis Johnson. Guess who has the Number One defense in the NCAA right now . . . .

5. Sure, that’s a brutal stretch in the middle of the season, but the Hogs are going to sneak up and beat one of those teams. Maybe two. UH, NOT BLOODY LIKELY. The leading contenders were Alabama (not) and Auburn, with Texas thrown in for historical/hysterical delusions of grandeur purposes. Okay, we still have a chance against Auburn, which is running some sort of offense derived from Medieval chain mail formations. I mean 3-2? Against Mississippi State? For real? Followed by a 14-12 thrashing of the Vols. If we let Auburn hang 30 plus on us, then the season is officially over. We have a chance only because Arkansas seems to have some magic spell over Auburn. Or maybe that was HDN. As for Florida, well diggity, they are gonna be pumped and mad and looking to put us on the wrong side of a 63-21 whupping. Which, coincidentally, is my prediction for Saturday’s game. There is some hope, albeit not based in reality, that we will find a way to exploit the Florida D-backs. I guess that’s why I think we might actually score 21 points. But let’s see, how did we do against a good running QB last week? Hence the 63.

In honor of this week’s official start of the national holiday known as March Madness, we’ve asked some of our regular contributors to weigh in with their takes on the tournament. Today’s post is written by frequent commenter J. Hawg 3, whose description of listening to the radio broadcast of the Tennessee game in the parking lot outside a wedding reception is still cracking us up a bit. So, sit back and enjoy J. Hawg’s breakdown of the various tourney scenarios:

I was already depressed Sunday afternoon, watching this group of Hogs choke away their last chance at a ring. But when the first set of seeds were announced during the selection show, my heart sank. The Hogs drew about as bad a seed as was possible for them.

In the first place, there’s Indiana. Two bona fide All-Big Ten selections in Eric Gordon and D. J. White, and a team that was ranked No. 7 in the country shortly before the Kelvin Sampson debacle. Yes, they have been inconsistent, even suicidally depressive since then under Dan Dakich. But, uh, so have the Hogs. I would submit Indiana, if they decide to play, is the toughest No. 8 seed in the tournament. I’d like our chances better with Mississippi State (we beat them once; should have beat them twice), even better with BYU or especially UNLV. Gordon will give our weak guards fits; White, when he’s on, is a monster inside. And we have problems with really mobile and aggressive post players, despite our size.

The Hogs can certainly win against the Hoosiers, but only if the “good” Hogs show up. You know, the ones that can actually make a jump shot, don’t fall asleep on in-bounds plays, pass the ball and rebound. Which is to say, the Hogs we saw Friday and Saturday and not the ones we saw Sunday. It would help immensely if the “bad” Hoosiers showed up as well. If the “good” Hoosiers and “good” Hogs both show up, it will be a whale of a ball game, too close to call. If the “bad” Hogs show up, they will lose, and lose badly if the “good” Hoosiers show. I just don’t know how likely the Hoosiers are to play well for Dakich (they sure look like they are laying down), but the chances of the good Hogs showing are only about 70 percent (and I’m being charitable given our recent NCAA performances).

Let’s have some fun and assume a win in the first round, which is a classic 8-9 toss up. The second round is, well, let’s be frank: the Hogs have about as much chance of beating North Carolina as will Coppin State or Mt. St. Mary’s. (An Indiana playing their best stands a lot better chance of beating North Carolina, by the way.) Again, almost any of the other No. 1 seeds would have been more favorable.

(Read on …)