Calipari, Hogs vs. 12th-ranked Kentucky at Rupp Arena in Lexington feels like it could be bigger than one game, one homecoming

By Kevin McPherson

LITTLE ROCK — First-year Arkansas head coach John Calipari is making his much anticipated return to Lexington, Ky., this weekend to lead his under-performing Razorbacks into battle against his former team spanning the previous 15 seasons, the Kentucky Wildcats.

The flood of national attention that will spotlight this matchup has the potential to impact a primary thematic that goes beyond the importance of one game (more on that down the page), something that nobody predicted a few months ago when the SEC released its 2024-25 league matchups revealing Calipari’s first Arkansas team would play the Wildcats only once this season with that meeting taking place in legendary Rupp Arena, where eight national championship banners hang from the hallowed rafters, including the one commemorating the ’11-12 Calipari-led Wildcats’ title run.

The Hoop Hogs (12-8, 1-6 SEC, NCAA NET No. 59) and 12th-ranked Wildcats (15-5, 4-3 SEC, NCAA NET No. 10) will tip off to much fanfare at 8 p.m. CT on Saturday on ESPN.

Arkansas is mired in a funk while either establishing or matching three of the worst losing stretches in program history: a. worst SEC start through the first five league games (0-5); b. tied for the worst SEC start through the first seven league games (1-6, matches the 2008-09 and ’23-24 teams); and c. fewest wins in January (1) since Stan Heath’s first Razorbacks squad (’02-03).

Calipari’s Naismith Hall of Fame resume had not suffered a five-game losing streak to open league play since the 1980s when he was the head coach at UMass playing in the Atlantic-10 conference.

With lofty high school and transfer portal rankings (national top 5 in both) and subsequent preseason expectations soaring (No. 16 ranking in the initial Associated Press Top 25 poll and predicted top 4 finish in the SEC) in Calipari’s inaugural campaign at Arkansas, it wasn’t until the Hogs’ massive landslide to begin league play that anyone envisioned that this UA-v-UK matchup to tip off February in Rupp would lack the big-stage, big-stakes fireworks that go with two Big Dance worthy opponents locking horns in what is the strongest SEC ever.

Kentucky has exceeded preseason expectations while more than holding its own in that regard, but Arkansas is nowhere near that caliber of team and may not have the chops to course-correct as the team approaches the midway point of league play.

Despite Arkansas floundering as one of the worst teams among the high-major conferences, Calipari’s blueblood-brand good name for what he did spectacularly at stops at UMass, Memphis, and Kentucky — especially the latter — still stands out as a one of a handful of coaching excellence standards in the college game spanning the past 40 years, and in concert with his first venture back to the place where his legendary coaching prowess was cemented, it still makes for an all eyes will be on Lexington come Saturday kind of spectacle.

However, his poor start at Arkansas does not exist in a vacuum. While his work at Kentucky was mostly elite stuff in his first 10 seasons — including winning his only career national championship in ’11-12 — recency bias might kick in for some ‘Cats fans and other onlookers as his recent March failings at Kentucky famously caused him to fall out of favor with much if not most of Big Blue Nation. During the previous four seasons, his last Wildcats teams were upset three times in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament (twice in David-vs.-Goliath first-round matchups heard throughout the college basketball universe) while also failing to make the NCAAT once during that same stretch.

Which brings us to the aforementioned point that the biggest, most significant theme that has potential to emerge from this game is a narrative that Calipari is not only on a downward trajectory entering the twilight of his storied career, but that his decline as a coach is plummeting rapidly … and is in flames.

The Hogs have lost all three road contests in league play, and in the two of those that were played against teams that have strong NCAAT resumes — Tennessee and Missouri — the Hogs lost by 24 points and 18 points, respectively, while authoring implosive performances from start to finish.

Another showing like that with so much attention on this one game might be enough for a Calipari’s forever cooked narrative to become settled opinion for any college basketball gurus, media, fans, and potential recruits who had not already come to that conclusion.

It certainly won’t help matters for a proud Arkansas program that for the foreseeable future is tied to Calipari, and it’s felt even more by the donors and season ticketholders who’ve poured millions of dollars into the Calipari experiment, specifically for his salary and player NIL coffers. The scenario is made more precarious by the fact that in recent days the Arkansas athletics department has issued a revamped and overtly aggressive men’s basketball ticket offering that requires donors to substantially increase their contributions in order to maintain their future ticket allotments.

After all, it’s only year one in what is on paper the beginning of a five-year run together. A bad loss at Kentucky may not technically be the first domino in a bad season, but it could be the most memorable domino that sets the tone for the “sky is not falling, it HAS ALREADY FALLEN” narrative that might ultimately define the Calipari-Arkansas era.

On the flip side, an Arkansas road upset as a double-digit-margin underdog coming in would give the Hogs their second Quad-1 win of the season and their second win in their last three games — the Razorbacks are coming off a home split with Georgia (68-65 win) and Oklahoma (65-62 loss). The fact is every game since the 0-5 league start beginning with the Georgia tilt a week ago is must-win territory for Arkansas, and a victory at Rupp might be just enough to spark some hope that there’s still a path to build up an NCAAT at-large-bid resume with 10 more league games to go before the SEC Tournament. Even a close-call loss to Kentucky might take the edge off rumblings that Calipari is washed up, although that won’t be much of a consolation given how miserable this season has become for the program.

Putting the serious business of the game and its potential impact aside, there’s also the reception and reactions from fans that will land on the Head Hog once he’s inside a jam-packed Rupp Arena.

Calipari — during his ONLY game preview press conference this season — acknowledged on Thursday that emotions will inevitably emerge this weekend.

“There will be some emotions now walking into Rupp Arena,” he said. “From me, you’re not going to erase from my mind what we’ve done there. You can’t erase history, it’s what it was. For them (offseason Kentucky-to-Arkansas transfers Adou Thiero, DJ Wagner, and Zvonimir Ivisic), last year, some of the stuff we did was — and they were all part of it. So, walking in, there will be emotions. There will be things that, you know I’m going to walk in — now we walk in Friday night, so I get to run a little run-through in Rupp, so we’ll be there Friday night.

“But, yeah it’s, I cherish my time there and so does Ellen and our family, great friends, lifelong friends they will be. Now, I want you to understand, even my friends are Kentucky fans. They grew up with Kentucky and they’re going to be Kentucky fans. Now, I hope they have red socks on. But, that’s what it is and I look forward to walking in the building. As an opposing coach, I’m the opposing coach. In my time, I don’t remember them ever cheering an opposing coach. So, if that, I’m fine. All I know is, the fans, they’re terrific. They were terrific during our run. They’re engaged and my guess is they’re going to be really engaged on Saturday.”

Another Kentucky / college basketball coaching legend, St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino (his lone ‘Cats national title came in ’95-96) recorded a video message that he posted to social media on Thursday to urge Kentucky fans attending the game to tip their collective hat to Calipari.

“Hello Big Blue Nation,” Pitino began. “I didn’t steer you wrong with (current Kentucky coach) Mark Pope when I sent out that last video, and I certainly won’t steer you wrong with this video. Toughest day of my coaching career at Louisville (where Pitino also won a national championship) was when I had to walk into Rupp Arena. Tried not to show it, but when I went home the reception tore me up apart because I love that place so much …

“But this is different, and as you all know I’m not best friends with John Calipari. But I respect him, certainly. But, it (Calipari’s departure from Kentucky following ’23-24) was a mutual thing. The fans wanted a change, John read the tea leaves, he needed a change. And, he really didn’t want to leave, but what did he do for you? He brought the best talent in the history of the game in America to Lexington. He also won a national championship. He also, his style of play was extremely entertaining. So he’s coming back on Saturday, and I want all of you to show the great class that you have — 23,000-plus people giving him a huge standing ovation. Show him what respect and admiration is all about. I know you have the class, I’ll always believe in you. Do it once again.”

One has to wonder if not for his 15th-ranked St. John’s team enjoying success this season, would Pitino would have weighed in with his magnanimous public gesture?

It’s been a ’24-25 Hoop Hogs season filled with follies, mishaps, and unprecedented losing on Calipari’s watch headlined by injury attrition (including the loss for the remainder of the season of star freshman guard Boogie Fland two weeks ago), lack of three-point shooting, lack of playing with consistent physicality, lack of poise and clutch genes on the roster, and lack of on- and off-court leadership that begins at the top.

It’s the recipe that has the Hogs currently in sole possession of 15th place in the 16-team SEC. What’s glaring is that Calipari’s talking points just three weeks ago that he has a “good team” despite early league losses were reshaped in recent days to a devolved “we’ve got a great group of kids.”

Was he naive about the quality of his team? Coaching malpractice at play? Likely YES on both accounts. Is he complicit in this bomb of a basketball movie? Of course, more than anyone because it’s his program. He wrote the screenplay, he assembled what was thought to be an all-star cast, and he directed and edited the scenes. This is all his.

And while there’s a sliver of possibility Arkansas can right the ship this season, the most realistic outcomes correlate to a continued downward spiral over the next 5-6 weeks until the Hogs’ season mercifully ends.

This last chapter of Calipari’s career won’t define his legacy, but make no mistake all that matters to Arkansas fans is how he fares in his time in Fayetteville. It’s off to a brutal start, and so far no loss or mishap along the way (and that goes for the team’s worst losses to date) will have the kind of lasting sting that an embarrassing loss at Rupp on Saturday will yield in this endeavor.

Again, it has the kind of impact potential to stain, with an exclamation point, the Calipari-Arkansas venture beyond one game and one season, igniting a powder keg of perceptions that go deeper than the just the reality that this particular Hoop Hogs squad is historically bad and will not play beyond this one SECT. Even a respectable loss might not be enough to stem that perception tide.

The Hogs need a win. That way, no matter what happens moving forward, at least BBN won’t have the satisfaction of saying the Calipari train while taking the Razorbacks with it went completely off the rails in their house. One win, not even this one if it happens, equates to much of a parting gift if this Arkansas-Calipari thing ultimately proves to be a dud, but the alternative of a Saturday loss at Rupp has the potential to pack a powerful punch leaving a painful and unwanted black eye that doesn’t heal anytime soon.