John Calipari shares mixed feelings about Arkansas-Kentucky matchup, return to Rupp Arena
First-year Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari does not have to wait long for his return to Rupp Arena as his Razorbacks match up next season with Kentucky on the road. The SEC released its 2024-25 matchup pairings and pitted the Razorbacks against Calipari’s former squad just once with that lone contest coming in the facility where the Hall of Fame coach found tremendous amounts of success for a decade and a half.
Calipari squares off against Mark Pope in a showdown between two of the highest-profile coaching hires of the 2024 offseason. The former brings ample Final Four experience to an Arkansas program that has plenty of recent postseason success to its name, while the latter is a fast riser in the coaching industry who returns to his alma mater and seeks to win a national championship with the Wildcats as both a player and a coach.
“Was there any doubt that we were going to go to Rupp Arena?” Calipari said Tuesday in a media availability session. “Which, you know, in one way I look forward to it; in another way I’m not going to look forward to it.”
