The legend of John Calipari grew on Saturday.
In his first season main Arkansas, the Razorbacks are headed to the Candy 16.
West Area No. 10 seed Arkansas (22-13, 8-10 in SEC) defeated No. 2 seed St. John’s (31-5, 18-2 in Large East), 75-66, to advance to its fifteenth regional semifinal in program historical past and Calipari’s sixteenth.
Not dangerous for a workforce that started convention play 0-5, together with a loss at LSU (14-18, 3-15 in SEC), one among two SEC faculties to fail to make the 68-team NCAA Match area. Or one lacking its main scorer.
Arkansas occurs to be each.
The Razorbacks had been left for useless in early January, however Calipari has righted the ship, with Arkansas going 7-2 in its final 9 video games.
Issues appeared questionable initially of March Insanity after Calipari introduced junior guard Adou Thiero, the workforce’s main scorer at 15.6 factors per sport, could be unavailable to start out the tourney.
As an alternative, the 2015 Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame inductee has orchestrated one other prolonged NCAA Match run, additional establishing his standing as one of many biggest head coaches in males’s school basketball historical past.
Freshman 6-foot-5 ahead Billy Richmond III led the Razorbacks off the bench with 16 factors in opposition to St. John’s.
Defensively, Arkansas restricted 6-foot-7 Pink Storm junior guard RJ Luis Jr., the 2024-25 Large East Participant of the Yr, to 9 factors on 3-of-17 capturing.
Per ESPN, Calipari turned the second coach in NCAA historical past to take 4 completely different applications to the Candy 16.
