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PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- When Arkansas beat Georgia 68-65 on Jan. 22 in Fayetteville, it was cause for an atypical in-season celebration. One of the March or April variety — something John Calipari almost never does.
The Razorbacks were 12-7 by the end of that night but still on track to be an embarrassing flop in Year 1 in Calipari's tenure. They'd started 0-5 in the SEC and were averaging only 64 points on 38% shooting. The team looked like a mess. But that win against Georgia was the team's first in league play, so Calipari bought champagne and they rejoiced as if they'd won an SEC title.
Really?
"Oh yeah — hell yeah," a damp, victorious Calipari told CBS Sports on his walk to the car in the back of Amica Mutual Pavilion Saturday. Daylight fading, the glare beaming off his face, he added: "My thought was, I'm building a program and it's Year 1 and I don't want to go overboard and go crazy — I just didn't expect us to be 0-5. I said, 'This is going to be harder than I thought.'"
Arkansas lost three days later at home to Oklahoma, and at 1-6 in the SEC, the dreaded return to Rupp Arena loomed heavy up next. Calipari had to wait a full week between games before returning to the place he coached for 15 years and left for, practically in the cover of night, last April at the Final Four.
Almost nobody thought Arkansas was beating Kentucky back on Feb. 1. But beat Kentucky it did, 89-79, and the Razorbacks' season was flipped for good because of it. The Hogs have gone 10-5 since that night, the 10th win coming Saturday in Providence against No. 2 seed St. John's 75-66 in the second round of the West Region.
A win at Kentucky in February.
A victory over Rick Pitino in March.
John Calipari, who has now led four different programs to the Sweet 16: This is your life.
The man finds himself in a season of redemption that is so fitting for a fascinating career, one filled with upset wins, mega disappointments, endless bravado — all of it done his way. For good and for bad, high and low.
Saturday's second round game was a compelling but unsightly game with 44 fouls, 58 free throws and abhorrent 3-point shooting: St. John's and Arkansas combined to shoot 4-of-41 from beyond the arc (9.8%), setting a record for the worst combined 3-point shooting display in NCAA Tournament history.
"Was it an ugly game? Or was it a game that was exciting? Like, both?" Calipari said. "An ugly exciting game. You know I don't care. It could be an ugly-ugly game and I'm happy we're moving on."
Any way, any how to beat Pitino.
"They had 28 offensive rebounds and we still won, which is crazy," Calipari said.
Not crazier than where Arkansas finds itself now, headed to the Sweet 16.
Arkansas put up 46 paint points, punishing St. John's has allowed in a game all season. The Hogs held St. John's to 28% from the field, tied for the worst shooting of any Pitino-coached team in 77 NCAA Tournament games (tying the 1995 Elite Eight vs. North Carolina).
"The whole idea is, I want to have us be one of those programs every year that has a chance to win the national title," Calipari told me. "Doesn't mean you do, but you're up at bat. Now we almost weren't up at bat when we were 1-6. They gave us, I believe, a 2% chance of being in the tournament, and we busted through."
As the game neared its close, CBS cameras caught Calipari's wife Ellen and his middle child, daughter Megan, crying in the stands. They were overcome with emotion at what was happening in front of their eyes.
"It's just been a rough couple of years, you know?" Megan told CBS Sports. "Mostly why I want my dad to win is because I want him to be happy, because I love him. I don't care about basketball. I wouldn't consider myself to be a basketball fan. I'm a John Calipari fan, and so I feel like he deserves this. He worked so hard. That team worked so hard."
The Calipari family experiencing the joy of March as Arkansas heads to the Sweet 16. pic.twitter.com/LQlgdKF3ke
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) March 22, 2025
"Vindicated," Megan added. "He's never said that, but I would assume he would feel that way. I feel that way for him."
"I do, too," Ellen Calipari told CBS Sports. "There are always first round upsets every year, all the time. I think that's part of the satisfaction you get is part of the accumulation of that too. That satisfaction is greater from that."
Few, if any, coaches have been more maligned for their missteps in coaching and approach to roster-building like Calipari. The man has won a national title. In 2015, he nearly pulled off the first undefeated season since John Wooden. He redefined what it meant to recruit at the highest levels for more than a decade. And he had some brutal flops in the winter of his career at Kentucky — Saint Peter's in 2022, Oakland in 2024, to play the recent hits. The dynamic in Lexington became toxic. The Caliparis had to get out.
Arkansas was an unexpected lifeline.
He brought a lot of his staff and Kentucky players and commits with him as well. After the shock of it all wore off and people realized not a lot was changing with how he was approaching coaching, he was again called outdated and stubborn.
The move to Fayetteville didn't make it easier. Privately, this has been as taxing a season for the Caliparis as any.
"It felt like a lot of pressure, for some reason, this year — I would say even past years have not felt like this much pressure," Megan said. "It is still really hard to read such awful things about your dad, and so I feel that's probably part of it for me. I just feel so happy for him that he can prove so many people wrong. And honestly, I think he likes that. I think he likes being an underdog. He likes having to fight his way out of a situation. I think he thrives that way. And I think we saw it here today."
Saturday could have been Pitino's latest big moment in his late-career revival. Many thought it was supposed to be. Predictably, St. John's red far outnumbered Arkansas crimson in Providence on Saturday — the city Pitino brought a Final Four banner to in 1987. It would have been a fitting full-circle moment if St. John's made its first Sweet 16 in 26 years in a Big East building, Pitino continuing something storybook.
Calipari, as he's done so often before, spoiled it. This was an unthinkable reality for him as recently as a month ago. Maybe even a week ago.
"Says a lot about these kids and how they've been raised," Calipari said of his players. "And my staff never wavered. Got to work, didn't panic.
"I panicked."
He panicked because he wondered how it could have gone so bad so fast right away in a great SEC. Freshman guard Boogie Fland went down before the Georgia game. The running assumption in the weeks after was he'd played his last game for the Razorbacks. Fland returned for the NCAA Tournament and gave Arkansas the depth necessary to beat two Hall-of-Fame coaches in three days: Bill Self and Pitino.
In doing so, Calipari is only the fourth coach to ever win back-to-back tournament games against Naismith Memorial Hall-of-Famers. Saturday marked the 14th time in 24 meetings between Calipari and Pitino the two that his guys won. Pitino is considered by many to be on the short list of greatest college coaches ever. Calipari's name never gets brought up in those debates. One of the greatest recruiters ever? The best. A tactical savant. Not according to his critics.
Calipari knows that. He cares. It bothers him. And there's little he can do about it.
But now it's Calipari who is the only coach to topple Pitino three times in the NCAA Tournament.
"It's definitely a rivalry," Megan said of her father's dynamic with Pitino. "No matter who denies it. They had very similar career trajectory."
On Thursday and Friday they'll play Sweet 16 games in this tournament and John Calipari will still be coaching in it — Arkansas faces scary 3-seed Texas Tech — marking the 16th time he's made it to the regional semifinals. That's the most Sweet 16s of any active coach.
A year ago, he was chided for an embarrassing loss to Oakland, which came two years after losing to No. 15 seed Saint Peter's. Whatever used to work at Kentucky wasn't working anymore.
"I'm not mad at anybody," Calipari said, revisiting a Big Blue breakup that could have been smoother. "What's happened for me is a blessing, that I was able to do what I did at Kentucky and Memphis and Massachusetts, and now let me try to do it here."
March can lift you just as it can crush you. Few understand that better than Calipari. Perhaps the most surreal coaching year of his life gets to live on for another week and at least another game. Arkansas is in the Sweet 16 and John Calipari is once again finding ways to prove a lot of people wrong.
