Calipari embraces new Cinderella role with 10th seeded Arkansas in the Sweet 16

By Canadian Press on March 26, 2025.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In an NCAA Tournament sorely lacking in Cinderella stories, coach John Calipari has the unusual role of being the closest thing to it.

After routinely taking powerhouse teams in his first decade at Kentucky to the Sweet 16 and beyond, Calipari has surprisingly done the same in his first season at Arkansas with the 10th-seeded Razorbacks set to take on No. 3 seed Texas Tech in the West Region semifinals on Thursday night as the only double-digit seed remaining in the tournament.

“My guess is other than a fan of Arkansas, no one is picking us to win the game,” Calipari said Wednesday. “But the great news in this tournament, you’ve got to play the games.”

Top-seeded Florida will take on No. 4 seed Maryland in the other Sweet 16 game in San Francisco.

Calipari is preparing for his 16th trip to the Sweet 16, having gone previously at stops at UMass, Memphis and Kentucky. Lon Kruger and Eddie Sutton are the only other coaches to get this far with four schools.

Calipari went to Final Fours at all three of those previous stops, winning his only title in 2012 with the Wildcats.

After failing to make it to the second weekend of the tournament once in his last four seasons at Kentucky, Calipari left after a first-round loss to Oakland last season to take over at Arkansas.

While he has enjoyed success at every stop, it looked like it might not be immediate at Arkansas when the Razorbacks got off to a 1-6 start in SEC play. But a win in Calipari’s return to Kentucky helped turn the season around and now Calipari is back in the Sweet 16 with an underdog after he had a top two seed in his region in 11 of his first 15 trips to this round.

“We approach the postseason the same. I’ve been the 10 seed. I’ve been the 8 seed. I’ve been other seeds,” he said. “There’s so many ways of doing this, including on the court. There’s a lot of ways to do this and have success. So, for me, what I’ve done, I want this to be like regular season like nothing has changed.”

Homecoming

With no teams from the West playing in the regional in San Francisco, Texas Tech might have the best case for being the hometown favorites. Guard Chance McMillian grew up in San Francisco and went to high school in nearby Vallejo and forward Darrion Williams is from Sacramento.

“I have a lot of people from San Francisco expecting to the come to the game,” McMillian said. “Feels good to be back home because this is my first game in Northern California, too, so I have a lot of people excited to watch this.”

McMillian has missed the last three games after hurting his oblique in the Big 12 Tournament. He will be a game-time decision Thursday.

“I’m getting better day by day,” he said. “Been in the training room, doing a lot of pool workouts and breathing workouts because I strained my oblique pretty bad. But my goal is to play tomorrow.”

Thiero’s status

Arkansas got a big boost last weekend with guard Boogie Fland’s return from injury and now have a chance to get another key player back this weekend.

Star big man Adou Thiero went through a full contact practice Tuesday for the first time since injuring his knee Feb. 22. He didn’t get on the court during the open practice Wednesday with his leg still bothering him but Calipari held out hope that he could get maybe 10 minutes out of him against Texas Tech.

Going deep

The matchup between the Gators and Terps is a contrast in styles with Maryland relying heavily on its “Crab Five” starting lineup and Florida regularly going eight or nine players deep. Maryland has gotten nearly 85% of its scoring from its starting lineup — the fifth most in all of Division I — but coach Kevin Willard knows he will need help from the bench to take pressure off big men Derik Queen and Julian Reese so they don’t wear down against the fast-paced Gators.

“We’re going to have to play all four bigs,” Willard said. “There’s just no way Derik and Ju are going to be allotted 36 minutes against this team. They run consistently. They’re fresh. They’re as good a basketball team as I’ve seen on film all year.”

Willard’s whereabouts

Willard’s future has been a major topic during the tournament as he has openly talked about his frustrations with the school and the changes he wants to make to the program. Athletic director Damon Evans left last week to take the same job at SMU and Willard is reportedly a candidate to become Villanova’s coach.

When he was asked about it on Wednesday, he responded by talking about the matchup against the Gators and their All-American guard Walter Clayton Jr.

“The biggest thing is we’ve got to stop Clayton,” he said. “He’s really good. He shoots the basketball going left 48%. He shoots it right going at, like, 38%. So really the last couple of days trying to come up with a game plan to stop Clayton because I think he’s one of the best guards in the country that we’ve seen.”

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Josh Dubow, The Associated Press

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