That man probably told about his birth. His coaching career has been noisy, absurd, chaotically successful and he has the personality to handle it all. You had reason to question that two years ago, when he fled Kentucky after too much pressure for a 15-year-old national title, posting 410 wins and a .769 winning percentage. But at Arkansas, he’s Coach Cal again: a spectacularly awkward player challenging for the throne rather than trying to look comfortable occupying the throne.
It’s not that different, but it feels fresh. He had grown stale in high-maintenance basketball paradise, Kentucky. It was not that he forgot how to coach. he just couldn’t eat that animal now and. And it’s not like he’s reached unprecedented heights so far with the Razorbacks. But again he is creating something special, not maintaining something precious.
His player-first sermons again feel like a refreshing cultural disruption, not just a sales pitch from a clever recruiter.
“You want to win, but it’s the name behind the back that I’m in the business for,” Calipari said last week after Arkansas won its first SEC Tournament title since 2000. “Now, I’ve been through something similar and done everything right at every school I’ve been to. So you can say it’s wrong, or you can live with it. You can be P’d off or P’d on. I don’t really care.”
Oh, he cares. He cares too much. But give Calipari some leeway. In his first season, the Razorbacks had made the Sweet 16 as a No. 10 seed the year before, with Calipari winning a coaching duel against Bill Self and Rick Pitino to advance that far. Arkansas enters this NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed playing a stylistically grandiose brand of basketball. The Razorbacks are averaging 89.9 points per game. They break the defense line with their efficiency. Freshman guard Darius Acuff Jr. is an aggressive lead guard who moves with ease with the game.
Acuff, who is averaging 22.9 points and 6.5 assists, is a projected 2026 NBA Draft lottery pick and the most productive guard of Calipari’s 903-win collegiate career. But the coach is more impressive about his patience. Between games, he has worn a boot due to a serious ankle injury. In February, he scored 49 points in a double-overtime loss to Alabama and, despite playing 50 minutes in that game, he refused to rest.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you sit out the next game?'” Calipari recalled. “He looked at me and said, ‘We lost. I’m not sitting out.'”
Calipari was preparing the audience for a long story. He told many stories in a 15-minute interview on Wednesday. About former NBA star Rod Strickland, now a coach who led Long Island University to the tournament. About Terrence Jones, out of Portland, and about wearing a woolly hat during an indoor exercise because “I could see my breath in the gym. In the gym!” About former Memphis All-American Chris Douglas-Roberts, who recently messaged him, “Thanks for letting me rock.”
But to praise Acuff, Calipari added an NBA sarcasm. He talked Acuff out of the team’s regular season finale against Missouri. The rest would have contributed to a record-setting SEC Tournament run for Acuff, who averaged 30.3 points over three games.
“I took a chance,” Calipari said. “We did NBA load management: ‘Sit back, let’s try to win a game without you.’ But if he’s hurt, you won’t know because he doesn’t do it. I looked at him. He said, ‘Don’t look here. I am fine.
Calipari presumably held a media availability following his baptism.
He is at his most comfortable when he can play the crazy uncle who somehow makes fun of himself and behaves like he gets no respect. It’s a bit like the underdog. That character didn’t end up working out at Kentucky, where his final four seasons included a losing campaign followed by three consecutive Big Dance exits.
It was the toughest stretch of his 34 seasons in college, a period in which expectation ultimately swallowed his performance. When the Wildcats finished 9–16 in 2020–21, it was Calipari’s first losing record since his first year at Massachusetts. Even though it was an aberration, Calipari did not save himself from the setbacks of the following March.
“We lost some tough NCAA Tournament games, and people started acting like he never won anything,” said Bruiser Flint, a special assistant to the Arkansas head coach who worked with Calipari at three schools. “Everyone goes through this when they start talking about, ‘Did he lose it? Is he not as good as he used to be?’ But sometimes you lose some tough games and move on. “It didn’t happen there.”
This is mostly a matter of perception. Calipari is 48-22 at Arkansas, a .685 winning percentage. It’s a small sample, but he won at UMass, Memphis and Kentucky at high rates. But when he replaced Eric Musselman at Arkansas, he rebuilt a roster that included only one holdover scholarship player. Then he dropped his first five SEC games last year.
He looked washed up. Now, people are saying that he is back.
Actually, he’s just Cal.
Going to Arkansas didn’t change anything for Calipari. This changed his way of listening.
“He’s stayed the course in terms of how he coaches, how he teaches,” Flint said. “It was a tough time at Kentucky in the end, but what he’s doing differently now, I don’t think has changed at all.”
Subtle adaptations have taken place. More than pushing a strategy, Calipari has always been in tune with the talent he recruits. His best teams understand his defensive schemes, but his offensive system is tailored to the personnel. They have been criticized for everything from being too loose to being too out of date. As the Acuff-led team is showing, the 67-year-old coach still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
Asked how he has evolved, Calipari mocked his former players: “They say I got soft. They look at me and say, ‘You’re. Soft.’
He probably brushes his teeth with the microphone.
Calipari is at peace. And somehow, it’s faster than ever.
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