Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari has been beating himself up a bit in the aftermath of No. 18 Arkansas’ 5-point loss to No. 12 Baylor on Saturday.
The biggest shortcoming, which ESPN announcer Jimmy Dykes pointed out in real time, was Arkansas’ inability to attack Baylor’s zone defense. At times in the opening half, things got so stagnant the Hogs might as well have been hitting their heads repeatedly against a brick wall trying to figure out a way to get through.
Hardly any back cuts. Practically no movement. Pretty much all disaster.
Once Baylor locked into their zone, the Hogs started “passing the ball, just throwing it at each other” on the perimeter about 30 feet away from the goal, Calipari said on his Monday night coach’s show. “No one drove. I’m sitting there, starting to sweat. I’m like ‘What in the world?'”
The first-half numbers were indeed pretty startlingly bad: the Razorbacks shot a miserable 36.7% (11 of 30) from the floor, routinely settled for 3s (2 of 12) and frequently turned the ball over (8).
“We came out lackadaisical, not knowing they were going to go zone,” freshman Boogie Fland said after the game. “It was a surprise to us. I feel like we picked it up going into the second half.”
Granted, the Bears had only run zone defense for only six possessions in their previous game vs Gonzaga, instead relying on a switch-heavy man-to-man look in that utter abomination of an outing, so it makes sense that Arkansas wouldn’t have spent much time preparing for the look before the game.
“I’m Disappointed in Me.”
In the time they did carve out, John Calipari admitted to not doing a good enough job of relaying the plan. “We went over the zone and we hit on what we were trying to do and I didn’t communicate it well enough because they were confused, which made them un-aggressive,” he said on “Live with Coach Cal.”
“So it isn’t their fault. I’m disappointed in me,” he said in another part.
Another reason for the lack of situational prep time was Arkansas’ shortage of healthy players over the last few weeks. “We haven’t scrimmaged that much because we only had five guys that were healthy,” Calipari said.
In the last week, that situation was supposed to improve, however.
Johnell Davis has been healing up from a wrist injury and had a nice showing against Lipscomb last week before missing all of five of his three-point attempts against Baylor. Still, he’s contributing in other ways and it’s easy to imagine his three-point shot returning soon considering the form looks good and he shot 41.4% from range at FAU last year.
The bigger issue is with the 6-foot-11 Jonas Aidoo.
The Tennessee transfer was a game-changing force in the middle last season on his way to securing All-SEC honors while anchoring one of the nation’s best teams. But on the Hill, he’s been slow to recover from a lower leg injury suffered in the offseason.
Jonas Aidoo’s Health Situation Causes Regret
Last Wednesday, Aidoo got his feet wet in a season debut against Lipscomb, scoring a basket and grabbing three rebounds along with two turnovers in seven minutes of play.
“Jonas was about 75%,” Calipari said afterward. “You’ve got to start playing at some point. And then tomorrow you may be hurting a little bit. Well, you haven’t played in a while. So we need him to get back because he gives us that veteran [leadership], rebounding, talking on defense. He doesn’t make the mistakes these other guys make, defensively, right now.”
Aidoo, apparently, didn’t get any better from Wednesday through Saturday, because against the Bears he looked even more out of sorts. In nine minutes of play, he had all of one rebound and one turnover.
A healthier Aidoo actually could have made a difference as the senior would have been better suited to deal with Baylor’s human wrecking ball, Norchad Omier. All night, Omier practically had his way with one-on-one matchups with the the less strong Razorback big men, Trevon Brazile and Zvonimir Ivisic.
“We got some good players; we’re still beat down,” Calipari said on Monday night before expressing one of the first regrets of his Arkansas basketball coaching stint so far. “Look, Jonas probably should not have played the game. He was about 70%, maybe 75%. Had a couple guys not play their best, but they’re not computers.”
We’ll see if Aidoo is feeling any better against Troy on Wednesday night, but not improving at all from Wednesday through Saturday of last week is a bit concerning.
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John Calipari Recalls Days of Being Softball Dad
It was a family affair for Calipari on Monday night at his coach’s show at Sassy’s Barbeque and Grille in Fayetteville.
His wife, Ellen, and at least one of his two daughters, Erin, shared the stage with him on the day of his son’s birth:
Erin, who earned her PhD in neuroscience at Wake Forest, now works as the director at the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research.
Growing up, she played softball and basketball and Calipari enjoying ribbing her for her unorthodox shooting technique with elbow flared.
“She did have the ‘chicken wing’ on her shot and I used to just [yell] ‘Chicken wing! Chicken Wing!’ But she was a good player.” So good, in fact, that she played for UMass. “Yeah, he critiqued me – it was awful,” Eric Calipari said on stage. “Yeah, people would say he’s an expert, but you don’t really want to hear that. So when I was younger I feel like I could have maybe listened more.”
“Don’t tell him I said – I don’t want him to think I’m gonna listen to him now,” she added, tipping her hand at the kind of roasting dynamic the Caliparis have with each other.
Calipari also shared that his younger daughter, Megan, also played softball as a pitcher.
He looks back fondly to those days of being a softball dad, which presumably could kick into a higher gear after his own college basketball season had ended.
“We’d go to all the games and watch,” he recalled. “And when she was in college, Ellen and I would travel. I think we went to Florida and we went to some different places to go watch ’em play, took their team to dinner, illegally paid for it.”
Hey, no reason to let some ticky-tack rules keep a team from a good time.
Lord knows that John Calipari has worked hard enough over the course of his life to pay for a softball team dinner or two with no sweat off his back.
Now 65 years old with all three of his children all grown up, he doesn’t appear to regret that move in the least.
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Hear more from this story starting at 52:22 below:
More on Aidoo, Arkansas vs Troy
Going into Arkansas vs Troy, Calipari’s chief lieutenant Kenny Payne emphasized that Jonas Aidoo is actually getting healthy despite last week’s apparent stagnation. “We’re just trying to bring him along slowly. I expect him to get better and better every day,” he said on Tuesday.
“He’s doing his preventative stuff and his maintenance stuff with therapy and such. But Jonas is going to help us. He’s going to bring a physicality to this team that we sorely need. He is going to bring rebounding to this team that we sorely need. He’s a big guy that, that sets great screens.”
He also said that Arkansas will be ready for the zone that Troy will invariably throw at them on Wednesday night in a home game for which Arkansas is the overwhelming favorite, more so than any house edge in roulette.
“Coach Cal has spent the last couple days working on the zone, so we’re ready for it. At the end of the day, it’s how the players digest it, react to it and do it with confidence.”
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