John Calipari’s return date to Kentucky is set.
The former Wildcats’ head coach will lead his new team, Arkansas, into Rupp Arena on Feb. 1. The team announced its SEC schedule on Tuesday:
Calipari left Kentucky this offseason after 15 seasons with the team.
His time in Lexington was a major success. Under his watch, the Wildcats won six SEC regular season championships, six conference championships, reached the NCAA tournament 12 times, the Final Four four times and won a national championship.
But his tenure had seemingly grown stale. Kentucky hasn’t gotten past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament since the 2018-19 season and hasn’t reached a Final Four since the 2014-15 campaign. Calipari opted against embracing the transfer portal, instead going with young, inexperienced rosters. The fanbase grew frustrated.
So Calipari chose to walk away, taking an Arkansas job that will come with plenty of resources but won’t carry the same weight of expectation he had at Kentucky.
“I’m not going to try to get spiritual,” he told Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports in May. “Something nudges you and you don’t know what it is. But I’ve been there [at Kentucky] 15 years. Maybe it’s, ‘You’ve done what I needed you to do there for the kids, for the state. Now I need you to do something down there [at Arkansas].'”
His flair for recruiting has already impacted the Razorbacks, as Calipari secured the commitment of 5-star point guard Darius Acuff Jr., the No. 4 overall recruit in the Class of 2025. For the 2024 season, he had to rely on the transfer portal to fill out Arkansas’ roster, notably bringing Zvonimir Ivišić, Adou Thiero and D.J. Wagner with him from Kentucky.
Like Calipari, they’ll return to Rupp Arena on Feb. 1. It should be quite the environment.