Sleep on John Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks at your own peril
By David Wasson
Published:
It’s sitting on your desk right now, isn’t it? That blank NCAA Tournament bracket, just mocking you with all the answers – including the eventual national champion – for now hiding as merely 1 of 68 teams on a line.
Stare at that bracket and squint a little bit toward that top-right side, the West Bracket. There, 7 simple lines down, is a team that not only comically under-seeded but treacherously dangerous.
That team, just 1 of 68 right now, is primed to go on a run that learned observers shouldn’t be surprised by but would certainly cause the casual sports world to sit up and take notice.
Coached by a national champion. Led by a scintillating freshman. Ready to win it all.
The Arkansas Razorbacks.
Dismiss them at your own peril.
To pre-ordain an Arkansas run to the national championship with the first note of One Shining Moment still over 3 weeks away would require a Nostradamus-like feat of prognostication. And we aren’t here to do that.
But what we submit now, dear reader, is that John Calipari’s Hogs are as prime a contender to cut down the nets in Indianapolis as any of the No. 1 seeds. Or No. 2 seeds. Or even the No. 3 seeds.
Why?
For starters, the fine folks in the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee somehow saw clear to put the Razorbacks into the bracket as a No. 4 seed – as if winning the Southeastern Conference Tournament simply didn’t happen.
I mean, why even play the darn things if they don’t factor into the seedings? Why is Arkansas a No. 4 seed when 3 of the 4 No. 3 seeds – Michigan State, Illinois and Virginia – didn’t win their power-conference tournaments and the fourth – Gonzaga – plays in the West Coast Conference? That’s first-level blasphemy.
On top of that, Arkansas was consigned to the West Bracket and will play the first weekend in Portland – over 2,000 miles from Fayetteville. Other SEC teams like No. 10-seed Mizzou in St. Louis, on the other hand, are playing far closer to home.
“We got a 6-hour flight and we play on Thursday. Other than playing on Wednesday and out of the country, I don’t know what they could have done to make it any harder for us,” Calipari joked on Hogs+. “Those kids, it’s kind of like I think they’re ready. Like, let’s go see how good we are.”
Perhaps the lone redeeming factor is that all 4 teams in the Razorbacks’ first-weekend site had to travel similar distances – as Wisconsin isn’t exactly around the corner, High Point is 2,700 miles away and Hawaii faces a hike just to get to the mainland. If anything, count on Calipari to be using both seeding and site selection as fuel to get his team angry heading into the first round against Hawaii.
Will Arkansas cut down the nets in Indianapolis in 3 short weeks? Kalshi gives the Hogs a 2% chance to win it all currently:
This isn’t Calipari’s first rodeo, not by a longshot. Enjoying his 34th season at the helm of his fourth major college program, Calipari has literally guided every program he has ever been the head coach at to the Final Four. UMass was first in 1996, then Memphis in 1996 and 2008 and finally Kentucky in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015 – with the Wildcats winning it all in 2012.
Calipari’s Hall of Fame bona fides are what Arkansas was counting on when Hogs brass lured him to Fayetteville to replace Eric Musselman. And after a Sweet 16 run in the veteran coach’s first season in 2024-25, Calipari spent big – a reported $10 million in NIL cash – to assemble a stellar team, go even deeper and re-establish the Arkansas legacy that Nolan Richardson built and cultivated in the mid-90s.
One of the central components of that construction was acquiring Darius Acuff Jr. A consensus 5-star point guard from Detroit, Calipari saw Acuff as the player that could take the Hogs to the next level and signed him over offers from blue-blood programs like Kansas and Michigan.
To say Acuff has been an instant success is an understatement, as he scored 22.9 points per game while competing in the star-studded SEC, led the Hogs to a 23-8 regular season record and won both the SEC Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year honors. Acuff is both a scorer who can hurt defenses at any level and an elite facilitator who commands attention from defenders while possessing the vision to find his open teammates.
Calipari has paired Acuff with sharpshooting guard Meleek Thomas (15.4 ppg) to give the Razorbacks quite possibly the best backcourt in the nation. And true to Richardson’s fabled 40 Minutes Of Hell style, the Hogs rank second for the most fast-break points in the country and are particularly lethal in the open court.
We haven’t even mentioned the emergence of Billy Richmond III the last couple of months or how hot Trevon Brazile was in the SEC Tournament.
Winners of 10 of their last 12 games, the Razorbacks quite simply can go with any team in America. With a coach in Calipari who is fifth all-time in victories (903 and counting…) and the best player in the SEC, Arkansas is a team precisely none of the other 67 teams in the bracket want to face.
Will the Hogs win it all? Maybe, maybe not. But they are among just a handful of teams capable of doing just that.
Which is why you should be squinting just a bit toward that top-right corner of your blank NCAA Tournament bracket, starting 7 lines down, and begin writing “Arkansas” on every line advancing toward the middle.
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
