Arkansas football head coach Sam Pittman’s team put up a valiant effort. After Alabama went up 24-6 against his Razorbacks on Saturday, the Hogs crawled back, making a game of it late before the Crimson Tide was able to run the clock out.

After the 24-21 defeat, Pittman said he was proud of his team’s effort.

“Coming into this venue, we knew it would be a tough task for us, but we wanted to be in the fourth quarter with an opportunity to win and that’s what we were,” Pittman said. “Congratulations to Alabama. I’m really proud of our football team, and I hate it that we couldn’t come away with a win. But I’m proud of our effort, I’m proud of our coaches, I’m proud of our players.”

The second-half comeback was in no small part because of the performance from Arkansas quarterback KJ Jefferson. The 6-foot-3, 247-pound signal-caller showed his physical strength in the second half, at one point throwing Alabama cornerback Terrion Arnold off of him like, in the words of Nick Saban, “A gnat on a cow’s ass.”

Pittman praised Jefferson after the game.

“I think, again, he finally had success, big success on a run, and for whatever reason that kind of gets you motivated, gets him motivated,” Pittman said. “And then he was dead to rights on that one, came out of it, made a big play, went down and scored off of it later on.”

Arkansas dropped to 2-5 on the season with the loss, 0-4 in SEC play. However, four of the five losses have come by just one touchdown or less.

Pittman said he hoped the streak of rotten luck ends soon.

“When you’re a three-touchdown underdog and you get beat by three and that goes in the same category of, you’re a three-point favorite and you lose by three, it’s not the same thing,” Pittman said. “It’s still a loss, but you know, we got beat by three at LSU. To answer that, we needed a stop. We tied it up, got beat by three. We had the ball with an opportunity to tie it up. I bet it was 94 yards away, but you’ve got to have those drives. We’ve got to finish somehow, and we’re just not doing it.”

Down the stretch, things get a bit easier for the Razorbacks. Arkansas plays Mississippi State next week, following by Florida, Auburn, Florida International and Missouri.

Pittman vowed his team will continue fighting through the end of the year.

“We’re not happy to get beat by Alabama,” Pittman said “You aren’t, I’m not, you’re not, nobody is. Our players aren’t. But, you have to continue to fight and continue to get better, and if we’ll do that, surely there’s going to be some team that’s not ranked in the top 15 in the country that’s going to play us at some point at our place. We’ve just got to continue to fight and all those things. We’ve got a hard road to get bowl-eligible, but that is our goal. We’ve got to start it Saturday.”