Calipari wins over the fans in short order
He may never wash Kentucky completely out of his hair, but John Calipari may not be loved more by Razorback Nation than this present moment.
Only a national championship for Arkansas, with an attendant celebration at Walton Arena, is likely to match the greeting he received Wednesday after agreeing to a five-year deal as UA men’s basketball coach.
He produced one for Kentucky, the school’s eighth under five coaches, in 2012, year four in Lexington. That he could not duplicate the feat brought him into increasing disfavor with Big Blue Nation, which Adolph Rupp spoiled and Rick Pitino brought out of slumber.
After 15 years in the Bluegrass State, where UK basketball is savored like bourbon whiskey and a fast thoroughbred, Calipari reckoned he needed a fresh start.
Hunter Yurachek, Arkansas’ athletic director, and who until Sunday some thought clueless in this coaching search, put on a strong sales pitch for the Razorbacks, whose affection from the fans, a UA football coach once maintained, is like that for a state park.
They got together at the NCAA Final Four in Arizona, Yurachek asking Calipari to take a one-hour walk, the first 30 minutes seeing things from an Arkansas perspective and the last 30 from a Kentucky viewpoint.
With executives John Tyson and Warren Stephens working behind the scenes, Calipari got enough positive signals from Arkansas to waive a $33-million buyout Kentucky tacked on to a 10-year contract extension for the coach in 2019.
Tyson and Stephens “helped galvanize the state,” Yurachek said at the early-evening house-warming and subsequent presser for Calipari at Walton Arena, pre-empting the 6 p.m. local news on three Little Rock TV stations. More NIL money, designed for athletes to capitalize on their name, image and likeness, helps Arkansas even the playing court, if you will, in these rapidly changing times in college athletics.
Former NBA All-Star DeMarcus Cousins, one of Cal’s ex-Kentucky players said, “Arkansas will now be the hot spot. Arkansas will now have the number-one recruiting classes coming in every single year. Arkansas will be full of celebrities.”
Coaching at Kentucky, Calipari has a good book on what to expect in the Southeastern Conference, where Arkansas became a force when Nolan Richardson coached the Razorbacks. New sheriffs ride the range, Tennessee winning the regular-season title and Auburn the SEC tournament this year with Alabama making the Final Four.
Richardson spoke highly of the third Hall of Fame coach to man the UA bench: “If I were a betting guy, I would bet on him eventually winning a national championship. And it won’t take a long time.”
Say, within five years, when the coach turns 70. From someone nearing that marker, it has definable features, not all unpleasant.
Calipari won two games from Arkansas this season and famously lost in overtime one night in Fayetteville on Michael Qualls’ slam-dunk follow in overtime. Mixing with his new fans, and importantly reaching out to ex-Razorbacks, he recalled one other visit to the “basketball palace of northwest
Arkansas.”
“This is the most cheers I’ve ever had in this building,” he said. “A lot of you were probably here the day I got kicked out,” although the Wildcats rallied to win that day over a Musselman-coached squad.
Whether at Massachusetts, Memphis or Kentucky, Calipari has branded his stamp on future NBA prospects. He popularized the one-and-done era of college basketball, now undergoing revision that it’s better to keep a few kids around to smooth the transition for the arriving McDonald’s All-Americans. Kentucky people, while proud to see ex-UK players in the pros, began wondering, “Where are the championships?” in 12 years without an NCAA title for the Big Blue.
Calipari coached his three other schools to the Final Four despite his name being sullied in some cases. Arkansas may not need a massive redo to regain the heights reached under Richardson and Eddie Sutton. An NCAA championship banner inside one’s arena is good advertising; so is a home court where visiting teams once routinely quaked, although not so often anymore, and 19,200 shout from the rafters most nights.
Musselman, said Yurachek and Calipari, restored a glow to Razorback basketball. For Musselman, now at USC, to be remembered with the respect he deserves, Calipari needs to win, and quickly, with fresh talent.
“I met with my team a few minutes ago,” Cal said, holding up three fingers, “and they’re all in the (transfer) portal.”
Razorback Nation is getting the September of Calipari’s years, no doubt, but seems happier now than since the Hogs beat Duke in November, their last big win under Musselman. Some may have wanted Chris Beard on the job — or ex-UA player Darrell Walker, or Arkansas State’s Bryan Hodgson, all of whose teams played in tournaments this season while Musselman’s did not.
“In three months,” said KATV-Channel 7 sports director Steve Sullivan, “they won’t care who applied for the job.” (Even this skeptic clapped at home when Calipari was formally announced.)