FAYETTEVILLE — John Calipari may have nearly 2.5 million followers between Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but don’t let that fool you. Unlike the last Arkansas basketball coach, he’s not a social media guy.
While Eric Musselman personally used those tools to market his program, his successor with the Razorbacks has someone who posts for him. In fact, Calipari didn’t even know he had an Instagram account until recently, and then couldn’t remember what it was called during Tuesday’s press conference, mistakenly referring to another app popular with the younger generation.
“I just found out, do I have Snapchat?” the 65-year-old asked reporters. “What’s the other thing? What is it?”
Other differences between the coaches have also emerged since the wild domino effect that saw Musselman head back west to coach at USC and Arkansas shock the college basketball world by luring Calipari to Fayetteville.
That’s not to say one way is better than the other, as both have been successful throughout their careers coaching in the college game, but the divergence has been interesting to see unfold over the past few months.
Summer Workouts for Arkansas
One of the first noticeable differences between Eric Musselman and John Calipari appeared this summer.
As Trevon Brazile pointed out to reporters at the end of July, a lot of the summer practice sessions under Musselman were spent working on team stuff, like implementing the playbook.
Calipari, on the other hand, emphasized individual work. Players were given very specific areas of their game to work on and that was the primary focus.
Only since the team returned to Fayetteville for the fall semester has Arkansas begun doing more team-oriented drills, but even then, Calipari said the top two priorities right now are conditioning and defense.
“We’ll give you some actions (offensive plays), but this is going to be about those other two things first,” Calipari said. “Which means, like normal, my offense will be behind a little bit. When we start the season, it’ll clunk along, then you’ll start seeing it, but that’s how I’ve normally built teams.”
Challenging Non-Conference Slate
Even though Kentucky didn’t have a lot of postseason success the last few years, a hallmark of John Calipari’s teams has been their steady improvement throughout the season.
That was also a staple for the Razorbacks under Eric Musselman, whose teams usually hit a midseason skid before hitting their stride just in time for the NCAA Tournament.
The timeline for how those two go about doing that, though, is once again how they are different.
Over the last few years, Arkansas typically eased into things with a few games against teams from mid- or low-major conferences before getting their first test in a Thanksgiving week event.
There won’t be much of a warmup for the Razorbacks this year, as their second game of the regular season is against Baylor — a projected top-5 team — in Dallas. They’ll also play Illinois in Kansas City, Miami (Fla.) on the road and Michigan in New York City in the span of less than two weeks.
“You play a couple bad teams, three bad teams (and say) ‘We’re the best in the world!’” Calipari said. “And then you come out and you get your ear clipped back. Yeah, because you’re not really what you think you are.”
Musselman’s non-conference schedules, especially early in his tenure at Arkansas, were designed to boost the Razorbacks’ NET ranking, even if they didn’t include a ton of high-major opponents. Then, when SEC play came, they got smacked in the mouth before rebounding by the time March rolled around.
Those slow starts prevented Arkansas from being serious contenders for the conference title and earning an even better seed in the NCAA Tournament, but perhaps helped Musselman sort out the adjustments needed to get the team ready for the postseason.
Kentucky, meanwhile, sorted through those issues with big-time early season matchups against the likes of Kansas and Gonzaga and had hit its stride by the time it got to the SEC slate. That helped the Wildcats almost always finish inside the top three of the conference standings and earn consistently early high seeds in March Madness.
Arkansas Basketball’s Tough Exhibitions
They won’t count toward Arkansas’ postseason resume, but John Calipari has also scheduled a pair of big-time charity exhibition games. Kansas, the potential preseason No. 1 team, will come to Bud Walton Arena on Nov. 25 and then the Razorbacks will head to TCU a week later on Nov. 1.
Eric Musselman gave Arkansas basketball fans a taste of those kinds of games when his squads traveled to Texas and hosted Purdue in back-to-back seasons, but this is the first time the NCAA has allowed two such exhibitions.
Considering he’s been wanting to play true exhibition games against fellow Division I opponents for a while, only to be told he couldn’t, it’s not surprising that Calipari jumped all over the opportunity. As seen with his non-conference schedule, he loves being able to face tough competition right out of the gate.
“You’re going to get hit in the mouth, but you’re hoping they swing,” Calipari said. “You’re hoping they will learn from that experience. Shoot, I want to win every game I coach, but when you’re building and you’re doing this, you’ve got to throw them into the fire and see where they are right now. And then we’ll all know — here’s where we are as we start this process.”
The format of those exhibitions could be something to watch as they get closer. Because of his close relationship with Kansas’ Bill Self and TCU’s Jamie Dixon, Calipari said some situational stuff could be worked into the matchups.
While the Texas and Purdue exhibitions were treated no different than real games, the Razorbacks might take the opportunity to play some zone or work on their press defense. They might even manipulate the score to create 3-minute segments where Arkansas is down 8 and up 8. All this entails a much different approach toward these kinds of exhibitions, whether against marquee opponents or cupcakes, between Calipari and all previous Razorback head coaches.
All of that is to speed up Calipari’s process of learning his team’s strengths and determining the best way to deploy his talented roster.
“You’re probably going to get stung pretty good, but it’s perfect for us to figure out where we are right now,” Calipari said. “For our fans to see where we are, for the staff, everyone has an idea of where we are right now, and that we’ve got work to do.
“I’ve never promised to have a magic wand. My teams, usually, at the beginning of the year will struggle some and by the end of the year, we’re playing at our best. I imagine that’ll be the same for our team.”
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