Nicer, Weaker, More Entitled: A Generational Spin on Arkansas’ Hardcourt Woes

Baby Boomers, Gen Z, Johnell Davis
Photo Credit: Shutterstock / ESPN Broadcast

It’s only mid-January, but it may already be time to hit the panic button on Arkansas basketball.

After an ugly road loss to LSU on Tuesday night, the Razorbacks dropped to 0-4 in conference play and are tied for last in the SEC with Oklahoma and South Carolina. The SEC is historically brutal this season, and none of the games on the slate are going to be “easy.” But this clash against the Tigers was about as winnable of a game as Arkansas is going to get.

Field of 68’s Rob Dauster offered about the most pessimistic take possible on the issue, saying that Arkansas has a leadership problem – but it starts at the top, rather than with the players.

“It was just never going to work,” Dauster said of Calipari at Arkansas. “It was clear to anybody that has any kind of basketball sense that the game has passed Coach Cal by. He’s not making adjustments, he’s not doing tweaks, he can’t play a modern style of offense.”

To his credit, Calipari has been experimenting with different lineups. The Hogs’ issues appear to be a combination of poor coaching – which Calipari himself admits – and sloppy execution. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t always get it to drink. That saying could certainly be applied to Arkansas’ woes at the free throw line.

LSU’s 26-of-28 on foul shots made the difference in a game that turned out to be a slugfest. Arkansas finally had a game where it was efficient from the charity stripe (84.6%), but it only earned 13 attempts due to a lack of aggression attacking the basket. So much of Calipari’s motion offense depends on getting to the foul line. When that’s not happening, things can go south quickly.

Most of all, the team just looked dejected and uninspired for much of the game, which left the fans watching on TV at home frustrated at the Hogs’ performance and lack of energy. Arkansas has plenty of issues – free throws, interior finishing, defensive errors and rebounding among them. Many teams have issues with these aspects of the game at various points, but Arkansas has proven unable to right the ship through the SEC slate so far.

Whole Hog Sports’ Richard Davenport suggested that a void of leadership is at the root of all of these problems. The saying goes that they don’t make ‘em like they used to, which the recruiting reporter  proposed as the reason for the losing streak that Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari has labeled a “crisis.”

Is Gen Z To Blame for Arkansas Basketball Struggles?

Davenport appeared as a guest on ESPN Arkansas’ The Morning Rush on Tuesday to offer his opinion on Arkansas’ most recent loss, suggesting a generation-wide problem that might be infiltrating the Razorback locker room.

Calipari has repeatedly talked about how his team is not communicating well, and that they need to talk more on the court. That seems to be a combination of so many new pieces trying to gel together, while also having a lot of more reserved personalities on the roster. Davenport feels this relates to Arkansas’ inability to turn things around so far.

“I wonder what kind of leadership you have on the team,” Davenport said. “I do believe that with this generation of kids, it’s harder for them to be leaders because everything is supposed to be ‘nicey-nice’ to a certain extent. They’re probably not pushed as much as other generations in the past…I hate to get on this rant, but employers are having a tough time with this generation.”

Davenport is referring to Generation Z, which encompasses people born between 1997 and 2012. In 2025, Gen Z’s age ranges from 13 to 28.

A number of studies add fuel to the fire of this gray-haired sentiment, with research showing that Gen Z is struggling in the workplace. While many younger folks reading this article have surely heard the same complaints about “this generation” from an older relative at Thanksgiving, Davenport might have a point here in relation to Arkansas basketball. With college athletes now getting paid for their on-field or on-court performance, they are becoming just as much an employee as they are a student. 

A perfect example of this changing landscape happened over at Tennessee this week. Head coach Rick Barnes benched star guard Chaz Lanier – who torched Arkansas for 30 points a couple weeks ago – while he was struggling against Florida. Barnes bluntly said it was because Lanier wasn’t doing what he’s getting paid to do.

Psychologist Mark Travers wrote for Forbes that Gen Z “displays heightened emotional awareness” and “thrives on feedback” and “interpersonal validation” in this current culture of instant communication. In a vacuum, these are good traits to have. It seems like young Americans today communicate better and are more emotionally intelligent than their older predecessors.

But also, those characteristics can become harmful when things aren’t going well at work – or when you have a winless start to SEC play. Thriving on feedback doesn’t do you much good when the only feedback you’re hearing online is that you suck. Being in touch with your emotions is also not much fun when you’re really struggling on the court.

Coaches and players talk a lot about drowning out the noise and negativity, but it’s practically unavoidable in the social media age – especially when players now have perceived NIL price tags for fans to use as a means to criticize them. Of course, these are generalizations of Gen Z as a whole, not the nine rotation players on this year’s team. But it’s useful context regardless.

Who Could Step Up as a Leader for the Razorbacks?

To Davenport’s point, Arkansas seems to lack a natural leader on the court this season. Boogie Fland is certainly the team’s catalyst while the ball is in play, but he’s an 18-year-old freshman at the end of the day. You need one of your more experienced players to step up as a steadying presence.

Arkansas has two seniors in the rotation who would naturally be looked at as leaders. Johnell Davis is one, but he seems to be entirely lacking in confidence right now amidst a rough start to the season. Dribbling the ball off his own leg in the closing stretch against LSU was a gloomy example of the FAU transfer being in his own head. The senior was visibly frustrated after this, letting out an anguished scream – a sharp break from the nonchalant demeanor that he usually carries on the court.

At this point, Arkansas needs some consistent production from Davis before worrying about something extra like leadership.

Big man Jonas Aidoo is the other, and to his credit, he’s done a nice job easing his way into the rotation after injuries limited him in non-conference play. He was arguably Arkansas’ best player on Tuesday, finishing with a double-double of 12 points and 10 rebounds, also swatting away four shots. Aidoo attempted 13 shots, the second-most on the team, and his assertiveness on the interior was a welcome development for the Hogs.

But Aidoo doesn’t seem to be much of a talker on the court, instead stoically playing his role as the Hogs’ enforcer. If he could serve as the Tim Duncan alongside David Robinson in this case, that would be fine, but the issue is there’s no Robinsonesque leader.

Billy Richmond III, Trevon Brazile and Zvonimir Ivisic are also pretty quiet guys. Sophomore guard DJ Wagner seems to be the most vocal player on the team, and he’s also in his second year playing for Calipari.

He was also at the forefront of what seems to be the only moment of this entire season where the team has interacted with the crowd in Bud Walton Arena. After a poster dunk to cut the deficit to just three in the second half against Florida, Wagner gestured to fans to make some noise after the Gators called a timeout.

If Davis and Aidoo don’t improve/become more vocal, it may fall on the former five-star guard to lead the Hogs and bring some mojo into the locker room.

Why Other Teams Aren’t Struggling Like Arkansas Is Right Now

The easy response to Davenport’s take is that pretty much every college basketball player right now is a member of Gen Z – so why aren’t other schools suffering from leadership voids like this? Morning Rush co-host Tommy Craft asked that question, pointing to Auburn and Alabama as examples of smooth-sailing teams right now.

Davenport said that with these younger guys, things seem to be fine as long as the team is winning – it’s when adversity comes that the water gets murky.

“If you’re having success, I think that’s a good thing and the energy’s going in the right direction,” he said. “But sometimes when things are going south, it’s a little more difficult.”

Eric Musselman can probably tell you a thing or two about that last point after last year’s Arkansas basketball season.

Can the Razorbacks Bounce Back From Miserable Start?

Many Arkansas fans are out there wondering if they should shift their focus to baseball right now, or if the Hogs have a chance to turn things around. After all, they likely only need to win seven or eight conference games to sneak into the NCAA Tournament. For a very recent example of how things can turn around, look no further than back-to-back national champion UConn.

The Huskies lost three games in three days at the Maui Invitational back in November, plummeting from No. 2 to No. 25 in the AP Poll – and they really only stayed in the rankings because of their status as the reigning champs. The alarm bells were sounding, as this UConn team didn’t seem to have the same “it factor” as its previous two iterations.

But quietly, head coach Dan Hurley has engineered quite the midseason turnaround with the Huskies. They currently sit at 13-4, having lost just one game against Villanova since their meltdown in Hawai’i. They’re 5-1 in the Big East, and have climbed back to No. 14 in the AP Poll.

So what’s the secret? Can Arkansas replicate this?

Like Arkansas, the Huskies also have a large NIL budget and a roster with a lot of transfers. But they still have a lot more returning pieces from last year’s team – forwards Alex Karaban and Samson Johnson and guards Solo Ball and Hassan Diarra, to name a few.

That continuity certainly helps a lot in the locker room when times get tough, and that’s something Arkansas simply doesn’t have after only returning one scholarship player from last year’s team. Wagner, Ivisic and Adou Thiero have played for Calipari before at Kentucky, but they can’t really be counted as true “returners” like UConn’s veterans.

The Huskies also have the undisputed best coach in the business. Hurley is the only active coach with multiple national titles that don’t have an asterisk next to them (sorry not sorry, Bill Self and Rick Pitino). Who better to pull a team out of a hole than a guy who just cut down the nets in back-to-back seasons. Hurley’s fiery personality also helps to motivate guys during rough patches.

If he doesn’t get you ready to play, nobody will. The question is whether Calipari has the guile to engineer a similar turnaround. The 65-year-old is a national champion in his own right, but appears to be in the twilight of his career and hasn’t had nearly as much success in recent years.

Calipari admitted in his postgame radio show Tuesday that he needs to do a better job of coaching the team up after consecutive games losing a double-digit lead.

“They’re trying, I just gotta do a better job. I feel bad for them,” he said. “I’m going to have to drag them across the finish line in some of these games.”

But it can’t all be on the shoulders of the 65-year-old baby boomer to get this proverbial monkey off of Arkansas’ back. The players need to step up, as well.

The road doesn’t get any easier for the Razorbacks, as they’ll head to Columbia to take on Missouri – who just knocked off No. 5 Florida in Gainesville. Arkansas has not met expectations in the last month, and older fans don’t seem to have much faith in this younger generation.

By figuring out a way to show a little more backbone, these Gen Z Hogs have the chance to kill two birds with one stone – but they’ll have to do it quickly before it’s too late.

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The Morning Rush’s Wednesday show, with Davenport entering at the 1:09:00 mark:

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Field of 68 goes guns blazing on John Calipari and Arkansas:

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More coverage of Arkansas basketball from BoAS:

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