New Arkansas coach John Calipari is known as one of the greatest recruiters in the history of the sport as he consistently produces talent for the NBA.
In 14 seasons at Kentucky, Calipari had 47 players selected in the NBA Draft, 35 of which were first-round picks. Each of these numbers is also expected to increase in the upcoming NBA Draft.
Many of those draft picks were freshmen, Calipari’s formula for success during much of his time in Lexington and even in Memphis (2000-2009) before his time with the Wildcats.
With rule changes and exceptions that allow players to stay in school longer, the sport has aged a lot. The radical change has affected the entire college basketball landscape, particularly forcing one of the best recruiters the sport has ever seen to adjust his strategy.
“I’ve always said, ‘What’s next and how can we be first?'” Calipari told reporters at the SEC spring meetings on Wednesday. “So you kind of read the tea leaves and how they’re going to do things. How are they going to make things where it works for everyone. but I also want to make sure I’m doing right by them in the way you’re handling this.”
Part of that adjustment led to Calipari not recruiting as many freshmen but still making an impact on national recruiting by any means necessary, like being able to schedule games at Madison Square Garden.
“(We) want to have the type of games, national games — you need to play at Madison Square Garden,” Calipari said. “Look, we want to recruit Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Saint Louis, we do. We know we’re going to recruit nationally. The only thing is we’re not going to take six or seven freshmen, now it’s going to be three or four. We hope to retain some, get some transfers and that’s the formula.”
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Talking about Calipari reducing the number of freshmen, adding transfers and retaining players is a concept that seems so strange, especially considering the fact that he signed seven true freshmen in the 2023 class at Kentucky. At Arkansas, though, he’s added just three freshmen — Boogie Fland, Karter Knox and Billy Richmond — along with five transfers so far.
“I think about last year’s team and what we were able to do with so many young guys,” Calipari said. “The lesson was, you can’t do that now with seven freshmen, you just can’t. You’re going to hit a team that is on average 25 years old, one was 26 and that team is physically going to get you. Now we have some transfers that are older, some kids that transferred from Kentucky that went through this, are a year older and some freshmen.
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There are still five scholarship spots left, although the head coach appears to want to fill just one more spot. This concept, on the other hand, is not so strange. He commented that at UMass (1988-96) he only played six players.
While the process is a little different, the Head Hog still shows some moxie when it comes to his ability to produce results on the court.
“If you look at my story, I hope you feel like we’re going to be OK,” Calipari said.
Arkansas currently has eight scholarship players for the 2024-25 roster, with the recent addition of Kentucky transfer DJ Wagner. Click here for HawgBeat’s Arkansas basketball roster tracker.
