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John Calipari praised for coaching job as Arkansas beats Mississippi State
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John Calipari didn’t have leading scorer Adou Thiero for a fourth straight game in Saturday’s regular-season finale against No. 25 Mississippi State in Fayetteville.
But Calipari’s resilient Arkansas team played through it, again, in a 93-92 victory that likely clinched an NCAA Tournament berth. Calipari navigated the Razorbacks to a 19-12 regular season and a respectable 8-10 record in the rugged SEC after a slow start to the season. The Hogs won 4 of their last 5 games down the stretch, and they’ll head to the SEC Tournament next week with some solid momentum after a thrilling victory over the Bulldogs on Saturday.
Calipari was getting a lot of heat earlier in the season in his first campaign as Arkansas head coach, but he went into Lexington on the first night of February and won at Kentucky, and now a little over a month later he has his Razorbacks poised for an NCAA tourney berth. The special win at Kentucky started a respectable 7-4 stretch to end the regular season, capped by Saturday’s win that got the Hogs to the precipice of a 20-win season.
They can get that 20th win next week at the SEC tourney, and after Saturday’s victory, Calipari was getting praised far and wide for the job he’s done this season in Fayetteville.
Here is a sampling of that well-deserved praise coming Calipari’s way:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
