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John Calipari was staring at another one of those devastating NCAA Tournament losses, until he wasn’t
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I was ready to tee off on John Calipari, and I know I wasn’t alone.
The Arkansas coach has provided plenty of moments of frustration in the NCAA Tournament, AKA the place where he had 1 win in the 2020s decade. Granted, those were all at Kentucky. Hence, why he ultimately opted for a new start at age 65. If you had told an Arkansas fan back in January that the Hogs would have a double-digit lead vs. Kansas in the NCAA Tournament, they would’ve assumed you were referring to a video game. After all, preseason No. 1 Kansas held that top ranking into December. Arkansas, meanwhile started 0-5 in SEC play.
But yeah, Calipari almost threw that away by not dialing up the right adjustments to Bill Self’s second-half switch to a zone. Blowing that double-digit lead was a direct result of a stagnant offense, and for a bit, it appeared that Calipari’s NCAA Tournament woes were about to add a new haunting chapter.
That is, until his team found the answers down the stretch. Relentless defense? High-percentage looks? A successful in-bounds plays that took 2 timeouts to avoid a 5-second violation and a turnover in a 3-point game with 12 seconds to play? Check, check and check.
Calipari said afterward on the CBS broadcast: “The out of bounds, it took 3 to get it in. I don’t care. Take 4 to get it in. Doesn’t matter to me. We won the game.”
Arkansas held on in a sloppy, eventful 79-72 thriller in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. Calipari exhaled a sigh of relief.
The play of experienced NCAA Tournament transfers Jonas Aidoo and Johnell Davis had a ton to do with that. They combined for 40 points and 15 of Arkansas’ 28 made shots. Aidoo did everything and more to keep the decorated Hunter Dickinson scoreless in the second half while pacing the Hogs with a game-high 22 points, including 2 free throws in the final minutes.
Aidoo’s lack of involvement after Kansas’s switch to zone was part of that aforementioned slide. After he exploded for 16 first-half points, his last bucket of the game came with 11 minutes to play. Arkansas couldn’t get touches for the southpaw once Kansas put on the zone. The issues with Kansas’s schematic change wasn’t from a lack of prep, according to Calipari.
“We had prepared for it and we didn’t know what we were doing,” Calipari said on the postgame broadcast. “They went with the zone and I couldn’t get guys in the middle until I put (Aidoo) in the middle. Let me say this, I must not have prepared us for zone very well.”
And if Kansas came out on top, Calipari would’ve deserved criticism for that. A lot, though perhaps not as much as last year when his squad allowed Oakland’s Jack Gohlke to look like Steph Curry in Kentucky’s stunning Round of 64 loss.
Alternatively, if Arkansas had turned the ball over on that in-bounds play, Calipari would’ve been to blame for that, too. It was a strange move to have freshman Boogie Fland inbound the ball in that spot under the Arkansas basket when he hadn’t played in 2 months. Credit Fland for knowing that Arkansas had exactly 2 timeouts remaining — he used both of them — but the freshman didn’t utilize his ability to run the baseline. It wasn’t until the second timeout that Calipari let DJ Wagner get the ball in.
Again, those are footnotes in a win. In a season-ending loss? They’re at the top of the eulogy.
Calipari could’ve also been subjected to criticism if Fland’s return had thrown off the mojo of Arkansas’ late-season vibes. Fland came off the bench and surprisingly played 26 minutes. But with the Hogs limited to a 7-man rotation without him in the SEC Tournament, his return was paramount. Even on a night in which he didn’t have his legs under him offensively — he was on the wrong end of a highlight-reel block that had plenty of contact — Fland had 3 steals, 1 of which led to a transition layup to cut the Kansas deficit from 3 to 1 in the final 3 minutes.
“I played Boogie a lot of minutes for a kid who hadn’t practiced or done nothing,” Calipari said, “but we needed to win the game.”
Calipari needed to win that game. That was the first time that he won an NCAA Tournament game as the lower-seeded team since 2014 when he led 8-seed Kentucky to an upset of 2-seed Wisconsin in the Final Four. That feels significant. Maybe Calipari is closer to his UMass roots as an underdog, though Arkansas as a program probably doesn’t fit that description as someone who’s a win away from its 4th Sweet 16 trip of the 2020s. This is a new era for all parties.
Thursday night felt more like a new beginning instead of more of the same for Calipari. In a good way. With a limited roster — don’t forget about leading scorer Adou Thiero being out — nobody would’ve been stunned if a more-talented Kansas team got past Arkansas. Instead, Calipari earned his 6th win in 8 games, all but 2 of which were against NCAA Tournament teams.
Expectations will be off his squad as a 10-seed. Time will tell if Calipari can harness that and reach the second weekend for the first time since 2019.
For now, though, Calipari can sleep well knowing that his March nightmares didn’t follow him to Arkansas.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
