When it rains, it pours.
The Arkansas basketball team losing five straight games to start the SEC season is bad enough. What’s worse is feeding into a narrative that John Calipari is, at 65 years old, all but washed.
Here’s just a smattering of recent YouTube titles that reveal something of a cottage industry springing up around Arkansas’ woes:
- A SHOCKING stat reveals JUST HOW FAR ARKANSAS BASKETBALL HAS FALLEN in Year 1 under John Calipari [Aaron Torres]
- ‘The game has officially passed John Calipari by’ | Arkansas falls to 0-5 in the SEC [The Field of 68: After Dark]
- ‘Coach Cal will be ONE AND DONE at Arkansas’ | Is there Buyer’s Remorse yet? [The Field of 68: After Dark]
- Is There ANY HOPE For Arkansas Basketball To Make The NCAA Tournament? [SEC Unfiltered]
It’s easy to cast all of the blame at the feet of the active coach with the most wins in Division I basketball, but in reality the reasons for Arkansas’ poor shooting, lack of rebounding from guards and bad defensive communication are more diverse. Calipari’s coaching, for example, had little to do with a critical stretch in Arkansas’ eventual 18-point loss to Missouri when it tried to surge back from 11 points down with around 9 minutes left in the game:
In short order, this series of unfortunate events happened:
- Boogie Fland missed a point-blank layup
- Mizzou’s 6’4″ Tony Perkins barreled into the 7’2″ Zvonimir Ivisic and took him entirely out of the play for a wide-open layup he didn’t miss*
- DJ Wagner and Billy Richmond look totally discombobulated on a screen and dive attempt, resulting in a turnover
Not long after that, Trevon Brazile attempted to to throw a pass from the high post to Big Z from 5 feet away, but chose to missile it in instead of lobbing it softly. Big Z had no chance.
This isn’t even touching on the well-documented struggles of Johnell Davis so far in this nightmare start to SEC play. Despite a couple of nice halves vs Ole Miss and LSU, the senior guard hasn’t look anything like the former Florida Atlantic star considered among the top players in the 2024 transfer portal.
For Locked on Kentucky’s Lance Dawe, the issue is simple. As he sees it, John Calipari “has taken one of college basketball’s best players at Florida Atlantic and he’s made him worthless.”
Hmmm.
Recent history doesn’t sync up well with the theory that Calipari takes transfers who have shown a lot of promise at other programs and then, once they come to him, essentially ruins them.
At Kentucky, he and his staff took Oscar Tshiebwe from West Virginia and only helped turn him into the national player of the year. Tschiebwe’s teammate, Antonio Reeves, flourished as the ‘22-’23 Kentucky squad’s second-leading scorer after transferring from Illinois State.
Hogs Basketball Stars Got Complacent?
With some imagination, it’s easy to understand how the early-season struggles of Arkansas’ two most hyped transfers – Davis and Jonas Aidoo – could relate to the fact that they were injured through much of the early winter and are only now recovering.
It’s also possible that Davis is struggling with the major uptick in expectations that stem from getting such a reportedly large NIL contract.
Now, “he’s the hunter, he’s not the hunted,” Arkansas broadcaster Chuck Barrett said Wednesday on the “Chuck & Bo Show” on ESPN Arkansas. “Everybody was pulling for FAU, they were Cinderella. They had the wind at their back and everything they did was just icing on the cake because they weren’t expected to be there.”
However, at Arkansas, Davis and Aidoo have had a much bigger spotlight placed on them along with the much larger paydays (Aidoo was All-SEC at Tennessee but Dalton Knecht and Zakai Zigler deflected attention from him).
“We all have this sense sometimes that when we’ve made it, you’re not as hungry anymore,” Barrett said. “I’m not suggesting these guys don’t want to win and I’m not suggesting that it doesn’t kill ’em when they don’t. I’m saying they’re in different positions now.”
Big Questions about Kentucky Basketball Interview
It so happens that resting on laurels is also the prime accusation levied against Calipari by the pitch forkerati.
Take Kentucky Sports Radio’s Jack Pilgrim, who on a recent podcast said he’s heard reports from folks attending Arkansas basketball practices including parents of recruits that point to a mellower Calipari.
‘They have said he doesn’t command the room the way that he did in Lexington. He doesn’t have that godfather, larger-than-life [persona]. Like man, when this guy talks, I need to shut up and listen.”
Pilgrim says he wants Calipari to do well at Arkansas, but then lobs out some grenades that could undermine that happening when it comes to future recruits and transfers.
According to what he’s understood from his informants, there’s “no accountability, there’s no culture, no structure” within Calipari’s staff at Arkansas. That’s quite a statement. The kind of statement that makes one wonder how a team could win any games – no less against Michigan, as well Kansas in the preseason – if things are so dysfunctional.
He also claims that he’s hearing there’s “a lack of respect from some players goofing off shooting on the side goals while Cal’s trying to talk.” This sort of seeding comes off as right in line with Kentucky Sports Radio’s mojo overall, as you can see here:
Wilie Cauley-Stein Misinterpreted?
Perhaps Pigrim’s most troubling charge emerges when he discusses a recent appearance by former UK star Willie Cauley-Stein, the 2015 SEC Defensive Player of the Year, on Kentucky Sports Radio.
During a 30-minute interview, Cauley-Stein touched about how he felt Calipari leaving Kentucky for Arkansas was best for both sides and that he’s visited an Arkansas basketball practice in part because Fayetteville is just a few hours’ drive from his hometown of Olathe, Kansas, and his wife, Kelsey Brooks, played for the Razorbacks.
In the published interview, Cauley-Stein didn’t share any details about that practice per se, but he did say he’s observed a mellower Calipari in practices over the last few years in general. He’s noticed that his old coach doesn’t talk to the recent players with the same edge he was addressing that mid-2010s Wildcats who were racking up SEC titles and were regular NCAA Tournament favorites among those betting online using a Crusino casino no deposit bonus.
“I think he got complacent a little bit,” Cauley-Stein said. “When I was here [Lexington], I felt like it was intense.”
Such an assessment comes as no surprise. Almost all driven humans get less intense as they age from 55 to 65. Take Bobby Petrino, for example. On top of that, making a habit of dog-cussing players is never going to go well in a transfer-heavy era in which they can leave at practically the drop of a hat.
Jack Pilgrim, however, makes Cauley-Stein’s on-air assessment of Calipari sound much worse than it is.
In the midst of his monologue, he noted that Cauley-Stein went onto KSR and shared that after attending recent Calipari practices he said “this is not the same coach that coached me…the coach that is there right now is not the same hardass.”
No, this is not what Cauley-Stein said publicly (nor would it make sense that he said it privately).
Cauley-Stein was simply noting that his former coach had mellowed some in the last few years – not that he’s a shell of his former self.
If Pilgrim is exaggerating Cauley-Stein’s on-air words in this way, it makes you wonder how accurately he’s conveying all those parents’ Arkansas basketball practice insights as well.
247Sports’ Arkansas Basketball Faux Paus
It’s not as if select media seem too concerned with accurately portraying the state of things at Arkansas right now, anyway.
On Friday, 247Sports published a list of the most disappointing teams in the nation. Arkansas, of course, appeared alongside the likes of Kansas State, Rutgers and UCLA.
The analysis of the Hogs conveniently revises history, leaving out the fact that Arkansas did, indeed, beat No. 20 Michigan in December:
***
More from Pilgrim on Cauley-Stein and anti-Calipari accusations starting around 4:00:
A Critical Shortcoming for Arkansas
The issues of this current Hogs team are obvious and they are extensive. Too many scoring droughts. Too many defensive lapses. Too much lazy rebounding.
But part of the problem is whiff in roster construction that is all the more perplexing because it’s one John Calipari saw this coming right when he was hired in spring 2024. Read our latest for more on that:
Hear Cauley-Stein discuss Calipari staring around 11:30:
More on Arkansas basketball from BoAS: