PROVIDENCE, R.I. — There is John Calipari, dismayed, arms held out wide, exasperated after another turnover by his Arkansas team.
There is Coach Cal, dropping his head, frustrated with the Razorbacks’ shot selection. Or maybe it was the spacing? For much of the second half against Kansas, the Hogs looked like they had never played against a zone before.
It’s often been hard to tell during games in this trying first season with Arkansas, but really, Calipari is enjoying coaching in ways he hasn’t in a long, long time.
After 15 years of chasing national championships and trying to satisfy maybe the most demanding fans in college basketball at Kentucky, Calipari is embracing this season of problem-solving with the Razorbacks.
“We learned some stuff today, didn’t we, boys?” Calipari said to his players. “I told them after. ‘There’s stuff going forward that’s good for us.’ This was a good one. That was an NCAA Tournament game, two teams battling it out, making shots, making plays, and we got away from them at the very end. “
In a first-round matchup of Hall of Fame coaches and storied programs, Cal and Arkansas handed Bill Self and Kansas (23-11) their earliest NCAA Tournament exit in 19 years.
Johnell Davis made a big 3-pointer and had a key steal in the final two minutes, and the 10th-seeded Razorbacks advanced to the second round with a 79-72 victory against seventh-seeded Kansas on Thursday night.
Arkansas (21-13) started this season 0-5 in the rugged SEC, seemingly staring at a lost cause. Instead, Calipari found the right mix through several key injuries, and a 9-6 finish that included a victory in his return to Kentucky in February was good enough to be one of a record 14 SEC teams to make the field.
“Yeah, we believed in the moment,” said Davis, the transfer who helped FAU reach the Final Four two years ago. “Coach always stayed on us, pushed us, even when we were down and he helped us get through everything.
Arkansas will face St. John’s on Saturday in a second-round West Region game in another matchup of all-time great coaches with Rick Pitino and the second-seeded Red Storm.
“We have to rely on everyone,” Calipari said. “When you’re down in numbers, everyone’s got to help you. That’s where we are. Again, the second half, we didn’t shoot it well. We didn’t make 3s, but we made the ones that mattered, and we made free throws.”
The third NCAA Tournament meeting between Calipari and Self had much lower stakes than the first two. Self won the first of his two titles with Kansas by beating Calipari’s Memphis team in 2008. Calipari got even in 2012, winning his only championship at Kentucky against Self’s Jayhawks.
Still, the matchup on Thursday was one of the best games of the first full day of March Madness.
Jonas Aidoo scored 22 points for Arkansas and Davis finished with 18 as the Razorbacks overcame a typically shaky offensive performance in the second half (30 percent from the floor against a rare Kansas zone defense) with some tough defense of their own down the stretch.
Arkansas flipped the game in the final three minutes, forcing four turnovers to go from down three to up four with 44 seconds left after a couple of free throws by Davis made it 73-69.
It has been that kind of up and down season for the Hogs, which Calipari said has brought him back to his days of being an underdog when he was building UMass into a national contender in the 1990s.
That’s a role reversal after Kentucky, where only Final Fours are acceptable. When Calipari stopped delivering them, it was time for a change. Last year, third-seeded Kentucky got bounced by No. 14 seed Oakland in the first round of the tournament to end a frustrating season and help pave the way for Calipari’s departure to Arkansas, where he had to build a team from scratch.
“Every one of us, including me, had doubts, and we all had to convince ourselves we’re going to do this,” Calipari said. “I had a card I read every morning and every night before I went to bed, and it was, I’ve been blessed throughout my life. Forget basketball. I have been blessed. I have a great attitude. I’m going to enjoy this journey and grow as a coach from it. I am going to make sure I keep an eye on my players, and let’s write our own story, and in the end it says, ‘Have faith.’”
For Kansas, a season that started with the Jayhawks No. 1 ends with Self’s first first-round tournament exit since being upset by Bradley as a No. 4 seed in 2006. Thursday’s loss came on the heels of the Jayhawks going 23-11 with a second-round exit last year.
“If I’m not mistaken, no matter what you do in life, there’s going to be some ups and downs, and we just haven’t had very many downs, to be honest with you,” Self said.
Injuries upended the Jayhawks last year, Self said.
“This year we don’t have that excuse,” he said. “This year our roster was good enough to be competitive, but it probably wasn’t the roster it needed to be to be talked about in a way that the best teams in America are talked about.”
Zeke Mayo led the Jayhawks with 18 points, and Hunter Dickinson ended his five-year college career with 11 points and nine rebounds.
Boogie Fland, thought lost for the season with a right hand injury in mid-January, returned to action for Arkansas. He was averaging 15.1 points, 5.7 assists and 3.4 rebounds per game when he was injured. He played 24 minutes against Kansas and looked rusty, to say the least, with only six points. But he has another game to improve.
“Just coming back. Being resilient, you know, overcoming adversity,” Fland said.
It has been the theme of the season for Calipari and the Hogs, and it’s still going.
(Top photo of Arkansas’ Boogie Fland: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
