Alas, Arkansas fans can breathe a sigh of relief. The Hogs SHOULD be headed to the NCAA Tournament in year one under John Calipari.
No. 9 Arkansas was able to hold on to beat No. 16 South Carolina in the first game of the 2025 Men’s SEC Tournament Wednesday afternoon, avoiding the final landmine on the Hogs’ schedule that could keep them out of the big dance.
That’s not to say that Calipari’s squad didn’t try REALLY HARD to plant its foot firmly on that mine, but no explosion — or perhaps implosion would be better in this instance — took place.
After leading by as many as 20 points in the second half, Arkansas let South Carolina make it a game, getting back within four to lose by a respectable score of 72-68.
“At this point, you want to win games. I’ll look at the tape and figure out, but I just thought we got tentative and was trying to get out of the gym. You can’t play that way,” Calipari said. “We have a bunch of guys that compete and did what they had to to win the game, so I’m happy. Would you like to have it a big score? Yeah. But at this time of the year, everybody’s fighting for their lives.”
The loss obliterated any prayer the Gamecocks and Head Coach Lamont Paris had of making March Madness.
With the win, Arkansas redeemed an embarrassing 72-53 loss in Columbia that forced the Hogs to make their last two games life or death. The squad also reached 20 wins on the season, projecting into the NCAA Tournament field as potential bid thieves continue to crumble.
In true Calipari fashion, however, things weren’t as simple as just a basketball game or a higher seed doing what it needed to in order to win a game it should. After the dust had settled, the biggest story was, once again, John Calipari.
For starters, Calipari went viral days before the tournament started, repeating a familiar rhetoric Kentucky fans grew tired of ahead of the conference tournament.
“I don’t care about the conference tournament,” Calipari said on “Courtside with Cal.” “That’s why we won it so many times, because I could care less. The tournament that matters is the NCAA Tournament. You play that tournament to get the best seed you can get, and if you’re gonna get to the finals, win or don’t go to the finals because you’re exhausted and you gotta play on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
While many could justify that mentality in recent years at Kentucky when the Wildcats were firmly on the No. 2 or No. 3 seed line, Arkansas is not. Sure, the Hogs had a solid chance of making the dance regardless of what happened, but a loss to South Carolina would’ve made it pretty nerve wracking in Fayetteville.
On top of that, the seed Calipari is talking about improving isn’t a high one. In fact, whether or not Arkansas was at risk of missing the NCAAs, it was absolutely at risk of being sent to Dayton for the First Four. Even after winning, Cal said he “didn’t know” if the victory over the Gamecocks locked the Hogs into the field.
Calipari’s comments led to plenty of backlash and mockery, something that has been a recurring theme for an Arkansas squad that was projected to finish fourth in the SEC and was ranked No. 16 in the preseason poll and has far and away failed to live up to those expectations.
In fact, while he didn’t venture all the way away from his comments, Calipari did backtrack a bit after the victory when asked at the press conference, but also got a bit defensive as well.
“It matters. We got to play,” he said. “Now, there was another coach in this league that said, ‘I’m not sure I really want this tournament because last year we got a guy hurt in it. I’m not sure how I feel.’ You’re going to ask him that same question, aren’t you? His team was one of the best teams in this league. He’s saying, ‘We got a chance to win a national title.’”
The debate over the value of the tournament wasn’t the only comment that got some pushback for Calipari, however, as he also drew some ire for what he intended to be a compliment for Paris and the Gamecocks.
“South Carolina, in a different league, they’re good,” Calipari said. “They got big guys. They got guards. I mean, this league is unforgiving.”
Certainly, the Hogs coach meant this as a compliment, saying that just because the Gamecocks were a two-win SEC team doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do far better in other leagues. Calipari was trying to insinuate that the SEC is such a strong league that even its worst teams would be strong in other conferences.
Paris didn’t take it this way, however.
“It’s funny you hear him say that, right? They don’t want to be in another league. You guys would have been good in another… What does that even mean?” Paris asked. “We’re in this league. This is the best league in the history of college basketball, they’re saying by any metric you would like to choose, including your eyeballs. They wanted to be in this league. This is the league they’re in. There’s not another world where we need to play in a (different) league in order to win games. There’s a world in which we play in this league and those games go our way. Last year we were 8-2 in similar games. This year we weren’t.”
Paris didn’t stop there with his passionate response, either.
“I don’t think I would do the disservice to these guys… I don’t know if we played – no disrespect for the SoCon, I was in it for five years – if we played in the SoCon, we would have a better record. We’re in the SEC. We play SEC teams. We played a lot of SEC teams in a way where at one point in the game they thought the game was over. They thought they were going to lose the game. We weren’t able to get to the finish line.”
Being fair to Calipari, it’s highly unlikely he intended any offense to Paris and his squad, and it’s possible the two will speak after and clear up the misunderstanding, but it’s hardly the first time Cal’s comments, even those that are well-intentioned, directed the spotlight away from the actual basketball court.
Ultimately, while Arkansas fans can rejoice knowing their spot in the dance is surely safe, Kentucky fans will take another sigh of relief that one of the sport’s most polarizing Hall of Famers is no longer their coach.
