Calipari told
Jim Rome on his titular show on his titular show.<\/a> \u201cThe minute I\u2019m not capable of doing it because the rules have made it or the environment has made it with NIL and with the transfer portal \u2014 if it\u2019s transactional versus transformational, why would I do it?\u201d<\/p>\nCalipari was hired as Arkansas\u2019s head coach on Apr. 10, 2024, leaving behind his 15 years at SEC rival Kentucky for a five-year, $35 million contract with the Razorbacks.<\/p>\n
The Wildcats claimed six SEC titles and four trips to the Final Four, including winning the 2012 national championship, during his time in Lexington.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy daughter tells me all the time, \u2018You do it \u2019cause you wanna do it, \u2019cause you don\u2019t have to do it.\u2019 But I love doing what I\u2019m doing, and so I\u2019d like to help 20-25 more families, 30 more families, and then I\u2019ll say, \u2018It\u2019s been a good run,’\u201d Calipari said.<\/p>\n
John Calipari during his tenure with Kentucky AP<\/p>\n
In his first season with the Razorbacks, the results started poorly as they went 1-6 in their first SEC games. But Arkansas began to rally in the second half of the season, ending with an 8-10 record in the SEC. That was enough for the Razorbacks to earn a 10 seed in this year\u2019s March Madness.<\/p>\n
Arkansas took down Kansas then shocked No. 2 seed St. John\u2019s to reach the Sweet 16 where it blew a late lead to Texas Tech to end the season in heart-breaking fashion.<\/p>\n
John Calipari coaching for Arkansas during the March Madness Sweet 16 game. Getty Images<\/p>\n
There are high hopes for Calipari\u2019s second season. While Arkansas did lose starting guard Boogie Fland to Florida, Calipari was able to land the top recruits in Darius Acuff and Meleek Thomas.<\/p>\n
Darius Acuff at a March game in Arkansas. Nelson Chenault-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Calipari will have to take his team once again through the gauntlet of the SEC. But if his team can live up to the hype, a deep March Madness run is on the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Calipari has been an NCAA basketball coach for 33 years \u2014\u00a0and isn\u2019t going anywhere yet. The Hall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[598,7,217,599,231,772,1544,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-103232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-arkansas-razorbacks","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-john-calipari","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-basketball","14":"tag-ncaab","15":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114695130569710453","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}