FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas football landed the commitment of 3-star quarterback Cason Myers on Wednesday.
Arkansas
NBA Draft Scouting Report: Arkansas’ Forward Trevon Brazile
Trevon Brazile has played an up-and-down five-year college career, and will now look to offer the NBA an upside swing at the 2026 NBA Draft.
He started his college career out with Missouri, before playing four seasons with Arkansas, one of which was cut short due to an ACL injury. He saw a lesser junior season before bouncing back as a senior, averaging 13.0 points, 7.3 rebounds, 1.6 blocks and 1.5 steals per game while shooting 53% overall.
Trevon Brazile
- Strengths:
- Areas of Improvement:
- Outlook:
Strengths:
Physical Tools and Athleticism
Brazile offers one of the toolsets and most athletic palters in the draft, even accounting for a mid-college career ACL injury. He stands at around 6-10 with a nearly 7-foot-4 wingspan, and has elite run and jump athleticism. He posted 53 dunks in 36 games for Arkansas as a senior.
Play-Finishing
Given his tools and athleticism, Brazile is an elite play-finisher, with the mobility to run the floor and navigate toward space. He shot 72% in transition, 69% on a high volume of cutbacks, 67% on cuts, and 59% as the roll-man. He shot 76% at the rim as a whole, finishing 69% on layups in showcasing touch outside of dunking as well.
Shooting Upside
Brazile hasn’t made massive strides as a shooter across his time in college, though he has hung around a workable point for his entire career. As a senior he shot a fine 34% on 3.7 attempts per game, showcasing enough workability to earn respect beyond the perimeter. For his career, he shot 35% on 2.5 attempts per game.
Rebounding and Defensive Play-Making
Brazile has a good motor and offers plenty of impact outside of scoring. He grabbed 7.4 boards per game, functioning as a defensive glass-cleaner at 5.8 per contest. Additionally, his defensive play-making due to his size was elite, garnering 1.6 blocks and 1.5 steals per game. He plays the lanes well with long arms, and has weak-side shot-blocking acumen in the frontcourt.
Areas of Improvement:
Strength and Physicality
Brazile is long and athletic, but isn’t the strongest or most physically adept player. He’ll need to continue to get stronger and deal with physicality better as a whole, especially since teams will want him to be positionally versatile.
Creation and Passing
Brazile is not a lightning-quick processor, unable to create for himself or others at a high volume, be it scoring or passing the ball. He isn’t likely to develop those skills in the early years of his NBA tenure, and it will likely relegate him to being a play-finisher who simply needs to move the ball.
Outlook:
Trevon Brazile offers an interesting role player template for teams picking in the second round. A player that has the requisite size and athleticism to thrive as a play-finisher in the NBA, with some upside on the perimeter. Ancillary skills like rebounding and defensive play-making help his case.
Brazile will need to land with a team that has star play-makers and gravity to maximize his skillset, though he feels like a serviceable bet at a playable role player.
Some nice fits for Brazile include the Clippers, Bulls and Heat.
Range: Early-Second to Late-Second
Role: Two-Way Forward
Impact: Rotation Upside
Swing Skills: Shooting Consistency, Strength
Teams: Clippers, Bulls, Heat
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FAYETTEVILLE — There are 12 weeks remaining until the Ryan Silverfield era begins for Arkansas football.
With baseball season officially in the rearview mirror, all eyes are on the Razorbacks’ football season-opener on the gridiron against North Alabama. Kickoff is set for 3:15 p.m. (SEC Network) on Saturday, Sept. 5, inside Razorback Stadium.
Over the next month, the Southwest Times Record will run positional previews twice a week. These will lead into SEC Media Days, with the Razorbacks scheduled to appear on July 23 in Tampa.
The Hogs are coming off a 2-10 campaign that finished with 10 consecutive losses. Sam Pittman was relieved of his duties following a blowout loss to Notre Dame, and interim coach Bobby Petrino failed to record a victory across the final seven games.
Now, Silverfield steps in hoping to revitalize a program that is 4-20 in the SEC across the last three seasons.
We tackled the quarterbacks earlier this week. Here’s a look at the Arkansas running backs entering the fall.
Arkansas football running backs projected depth chart, analysis
- Starter: Braylen Russell (jr.)
- Backups: Sutton Smith (r-sr.), Cam Settles (so.), Jasper Parker (so.)
- The rest: TJ Hodges (fr.), Markeylin Batton (r-fr.)
Silverfield and offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey had three running backs log more than 60 carries with Memphis in 2025. By contrast, Arkansas only had one player cross that threshold, and Mike Washington Jr. is no longer with the team after getting drafted by the Las Vegas Raiders.
No matter who starts, it figures to be a committee approach for the Razorbacks in 2026. Russell is the big-bodied workhorse who should set the tone on the inside and gobble up short-yardage reps. Smith is the big-play threat who will be used in the passing game and brings familiarity to the offense.
The roles for Parker and Settles are unclear, but they both hope to blend Russell’s power with Smith’s speed to be every-down backs for Arkansas.
What we learned in the spring about Arkansas’ running backs
Cam Settles is ready to contribute.
The Little Rock native flashed across spring practices and was the most productive running back during the Red-White Game with seven carries for 57 yards and a touchdown. He is strong enough to earn yards between the tackles and can run past defenders in the secondary.
“I just feel like I’m a very balanced back,” Settles said during the spring. “I can do it all. So that’s just what I base my game off of. I want to be able to catch the ball in the backfield, be able to run through the tackles and be able to run outside the tackles as well.”
Settles only had 16 rushing yards on six carries during his freshman season in 2025, and there are ballcarriers with more experience on the roster, but the rising sophomore is primed to make an impact and could quickly ascend up the depth chart with a strong start to the season.
Biggest questions for fall camp
Is there a star in the room?
A consensus four-star prospect out of Benton High School, Russell was always projected to one day lead the Arkansas backfield. There have been bright moments across his first two years on campus, but Russell hasn’t found consistency with a role or production.
He slimmed down to 235 pounds in the most recent offseason and looks like a prototypical SEC running back.
“A guy from last year who admittedly said he might not have been in the best shape he’s ever been in last year, to what he looks like right now,” Cramsey said. “You know, he’s still a big back. At one point I told him, ‘Don’t get too skinny’. But he’s done a really good job.”
Arkansas doesn’t have a running back on the roster that looks like Russell. He’ll have a major role, but it would be a huge boom for Arkansas if Russell can become the clear No. 1 option for the in-state program.
We already made our case for Settles getting more run in 2026, but Smith is another option for stardom ascension. He needs to prove himself in the SEC after running for 669 yards and hauling in 20 catches with Memphis last fall.
It remains to be seen how many snaps will be left for the rest of the room if those two live up to expectations, but that won’t be a bad thing for Arkansas.
Jackson Fuller covers Arkansas football, basketball and baseball for the Southwest Times Record, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at jfuller@usatodayco.com or follow him @jacksonfuller16 on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Watch Dave Van Horn’s opening statement after Arkansas baseball’s win over Missouri State
Dave Van Horn dishes on what went right for Arkansas baseball in a regional win over Missouri State.
As cases of a deadly tick-borne cattle disease continue to spread across Arkansas, researchers with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture have received nearly $500,000 in federal funding to test potential treatments to protect cattle herds.
The Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station received a two-year, $492,218 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to study ways to combat bovine theileriosis, a disease caused by the parasite Theileria orientalis Ikeda and carried primarily by the invasive Asian longhorned tick.
Emily McDermott, an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology and project director for the grant, said the rapid increase in cases has created significant challenges for cattle producers across the state.
“Arkansas cattle ranchers are reporting significant losses of the herd, resulting in economic hardship,” McDermott said.
No approved drugs or vaccines currently exist in the United States to treat or prevent the disease, making the research especially important as infections continue to expand across Arkansas.
Researchers will evaluate two commercially available approaches that could be adopted quickly by producers if proven effective. One is a prescription anti-tick vaccine developed by Medgene for long-term protection. The other will test the slow-release parasiticide eprinomectin in combination with currently labeled tick-control products and compare its effectiveness to two pyrethroid treatments.
Theileriosis produces symptoms similar to anaplasmosis, another tick-borne disease familiar to many cattle producers. Infected cattle may experience weight loss, reduced milk production, loss of appetite, anemia and reproductive losses.
“One of the tricky things about Theileria is that it looks so much like anaplasmosis that I think a lot of producers might not be aware they have a new disease,” McDermott said. “We’ve heard the same story a lot over the last year: ‘I had a bunch of cows die, and I thought it was anaplasmosis, but it was weird.’”
Kelly Loftin, extension entomologist with the Division of Agriculture and a collaborator on the project, said one key difference is that bovine theileriosis can cause illness in cattle of any age, while anaplasmosis typically affects older animals.
Two genotypes of the parasite, Ikeda and Chitose, have been confirmed in Arkansas, including Logan, Franklin, and Johnson Counties. Ikeda considered it more harmful because it attacks blood cells and can be fatal.
Researchers say infections caused by the Ikeda genotype typically kill 1 to 5 percent of infected cattle but have reached mortality rates as high as 50 percent in some outbreaks.
“It’s hard to think of a tick-borne cattle pathogen that’s had this much of an impact in the United States since Texas cattle fever,” McDermott said, noting that Arkansas partnered with the USDA for decades during the first half of the 20th century to eradicate that disease.
The grant also includes funding for outreach through the Division of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension Service to educate county extension agents, ranchers and veterinarians about the disease and its transmission.
The Asian longhorned tick was first confirmed in the United States in 2017 and in Arkansas in 2018. The first Arkansas cases of bovine theileriosis caused by Theileria orientalis Ikeda were confirmed in 2024.
Since then, the parasite has been confirmed in 15 Arkansas counties, while established Asian longhorned tick populations have been identified in 10 counties. Researchers expect those numbers to continue growing and say confirmed disease cases in counties without established tick populations suggest infected cattle are carrying the parasite as they are moved from place to place.
Researchers are also investigating whether insects such as horse flies may be capable of mechanically transmitting the blood-borne pathogen between animals.
Loftin said the Division of Agriculture will continue providing information through webinars, field days, and its “Asian Longhorned Ticks & Theileriosis in Arkansas” website as the study moves forward.
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