As the college basketball offseason crawls closer to a conclusion, the bigger picture is starting to solidify itself in terms of individual team rosters and overall rankings across the country. Several such lists are high on Arkansas with a brand-new Hall of Fame head coach in John Calipari and an impressive assembly of talent.
Andy Katz, for example, had the Razorbacks at No. 13 in his most recent version of his Power 36 rankings released about a month ago, while ESPN had the Hogs slated in their Top 15 as recently as July 1.
Other lists weren’t quite so kind to the new-look Razorbacks. One poll placed Arkansas all the way down at No. 8…in the SEC. This particular ranking should come with a grain of salt however, considering it came from Kentucky basketball beat writer Kyle Tucker with The Athletic.
This isn’t to say Tucker’s work isn’t good or shouldn’t be trusted – we’ll let you be the judge of that – but rather that virtually any writer long attached to a specific team will struggle to remain entirely unbiased when placing that program in conference power ratings.
A different, perhaps less-biased, metric also had Arkansas far lower than one might expect just given their talent level. Bart Torvik and his metric-based formula have the Hogs all the way down at No. 36 – No. 9 in the SEC – to start this season.
Of course, it’s unclear what went into Torvik’s calculations considering he has Division II transfer Melo Sanchez projected to play more minutes than Kentucky transfer big man Zvonimir Ivisic. Maybe his formula doesn’t recognize the DII-to-SEC jump by Sanchez and his expected “walk-on” role or the fact that Ivisic is a legitimate NBA Draft prospect who didn’t get an offseason before last season, so it may need some tweaking.
So yes, probably best to take these analyses with wagonfuls of salt. Still, Tucker and Torvik bring up some solid points as to what could potentially go wrong for Arkansas this season. While both might be too low on the Hogs, it’s worth exploring what goes into these types of rankings and decisions to see if they’re even possible outcomes.
How the Hogs Might Not be a Top 25 Team
Let’s start by reiterating that everything in this section is likely a worst-case scenario outcome for Arkansas. At this point, the Hogs look closer to a Top 10-12 team and a 2025 Final Four contender. Based on this, betting on their outright wins throughout the season is not without a reasonable grain, especially if you are using bonus funds from the best bookmaker offers.
However, Arkansas basketball fans know all too well how easy it can be for a team full of new faces to struggle with chemistry issues. Last season, former head coach Eric Musselman assembled a team full of players that excelled in certain roles at their previous schools.
Those players made up what looked like a solid squad on paper, but something – or rather, many things – went horribly wrong, leading to a disappointing season and an even crazier offseason. (To his credit, national basketball writer Matt Norlander saw those flaws before the season.)
Sure, it would be easy to make the argument that many of the guys on last year’s team came from losing programs, and several only knew how to play the go-to scorer role in bad offenses. They simply hadn’t learned how to win.
Even though every single Division I transfer on the upcoming Razorback roster came from a program with at least 23 wins last season, it’s still possible so many new faces don’t mesh together seamlessly – at least not right away.
Another point Kyle Tucker makes is the overall lack of total quality minutes on the combined roster. Arkansas currently ranks last in the SEC in this metric. This can mostly be explained through Calipari’s new philosophy of only bringing in 9-10 high-major players and filling out the rest of his roster with walk-on type players who understand their role on the team.
This stat is also a result of Calipari taking on three five-star freshmen – along with two lesser-recruited freshmen that will fill some of those walk-on type roles. Trevon Brazile also hurts this stat with his injuries the past two seasons. Despite 2024-25 being his fourth year in college, Brazile has played in only 60 total games – less than most players would play in only two seasons.
While it’s easy enough to explain why the total Division I minutes on the roster are so low compared to other teams, this is a legit potential problem. Even when considering only the top 8-9 players on all the other SEC rosters, having three freshmen would still rank Arkansas relatively low – never mind the fact that these are highly-rated, potential one-and-done freshmen.
Depth also comes into play when considering this metric. Calipari is of the belief that if one of the top guys on any team goes down with an injury, the team as a whole would be in a tough spot regardless of how much depth they have on paper.
This is one reason he opted to go with fewer – though arguably better – high-quality guys than previous years. This new method of roster construction is somewhat of an experiment for Calipari, and while it makes some sense on paper, there’s no guarantee that it will work.
Why Arkansas is More Likely to Be Successful
While it’s true that Arkansas is relatively inexperienced in terms of total minutes played, and somewhat shallow on the depth chart, the sheer talent on the roster shouldn’t be overlooked so quickly.
Most teams don’t play more than 8 or 9 players in their core rotation on any given night, so Calipari’s stance that depth might be a bit overrated is likely a legit one. Injuries could derail a season whether a team has depth or not – just ask the 2021-22 Razorbacks that saw Trevon Brazile and Nick Smith Jr. each miss most of the season with injuries, or the Hogs a couple of years before that which missed out on Isaiah Joe for a stretch of conference play.
As far as team continuity goes, if there was ever a coach other than Eric Musselman that could be trusted to put together a brand-new team in the offseason and still be successful, it’s John Calipari. He’s also been vocal about shifting to older teams built more through returning players and transfers rather than freshmen.
The upcoming roster does technically have five freshmen on it, but the three considered to be in the core rotation are all highly-rated recruits who are likely to be solid contributors – the way most Calipari-recruited freshmen are.
It’s hard to put much stock in Torvik’s formula that includes Sanchez earning more minutes than Ivisic. Even if Big Z doesn’t live up to his full potential and is truly a backup to Jonas Aidoo (which doesn’t seem like the most likely outcome), he’ll still have to play 15-plus minutes per game due to sheer lack of depth at the center position. This alone should change a lot of aspects in Torvik’s calculations.
It’s also worth noting that of the 24 games Arkansas currently has on their official schedule, Torvik has them going 13-11 (9-9), including a loss to Vanderbilt and a win over Alabama.
No, you didn’t read that backwards.
While no game in the SEC is a given – either as a win or a loss – predicting these types of outlier outcomes alongside an obvious error in the rotation construction makes this a hard metric to fully get behind.
Both Tucker and Torvik are also basing some of their predictions on Arkansas’ potential to be a sub-par 3-point shooting team. On paper, the best shooters on the team are Johnell Davis (41% last season) and Zvonimir Ivisic (38% on low volume).
This is a hard potential flaw to argue against after the perimeter shooting trainwreck through large stretches of last season, but it’s worth noting that when Brazile has been healthy, he’s been an elite floor stretcher at the power forward position. Even while dealing with injuries, he’s shot over 36% from distance in his career at Arkansas.
DJ Wagner also showed flashes of high-level shooting before an injury hampered him last season. This isn’t to say he’s going to have a breakout year from beyond the arc, but shooting around 33% or 34% as a spot-up shooter is a definite improvement over his 29% from last season, off which these metrics are based.
Something similar can be said about Adou Thiero, who holds the potential to take another step forward as a perimeter shooter. All of this also goes without even mentioning the smooth shooting strokes and high scoring upside of both Boogie Fland and Karter Knox as incoming freshmen.
The argument of Arkansas potentially being a bad shooting team is a few minor improvements and healthy players away from being entirely disproven.
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Darius Acuff and Malik Monk
One of the biggest targets for Arkansas basketball recruiting is 5-star guard Darius Acuff.
If Arkansas can secure his commitment (considered by some to be silent at this time), he could potentially do to another state what De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk did to the state of Arkansas in 2015.
ESPN’s No. 7 overall prospect in his high school class, Fox committed to Calipari and Kentucky on Nov. 12, 2015. Here’s how that story unfolded and how Acuff could create a similar dynamic this time in the Hogs’ favor:
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