When it’s conference season, and one conference has 10 teams in the CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, the weekends can’t help but to deliver compelling matchups.
So this weekend is filled with compelling SEC matchups.
Tennessee (No. 7 in the Top 25 And 1) is trying to bounce-back from its first loss of the season in a game at Texas, which just so happens to be where Vols coach Rick Barnes spent 17 seasons on the sideline. Kentucky (No. 10 in the Top 25 And 1) at Mississippi State (No. 8 in the Top 25 And 1) is a top-10 matchup between two programs exceeding preseason expectations. Alabama (No. 5 in the Top 25 And 1) at Texas A&M (No. 12 in the Top 25 And 1) is a top-15 matchup with heralded guards. Oklahoma (No. 25 in the Top 25 And 1) at Georgia (No. 23 in the Top 25 And 1) is another ranked-on-ranked showdown between two teams with a combined record of 26-4.
Fun games on top of fun games on top of fun games.
But the most interesting matchup in the SEC this weekend, I think, is Florida at Arkansas, where John Calipari is at risk of falling to 0-3 in conference play for the first time since he started 0-6 in the Atlantic 10 while at UMass during the 1988-89 season. How at-risk is Calipari of falling to 0-3 in the SEC? Well, the only way to avoid it is to upset a Florida team that’s No. 4 in the Top 25 And 1 and coming off of a 30-point win over the Tennessee team that beat Calipari’s Razorbacks by 24 points just three days earlier.
Good luck, as they say.
If North Carolina and Rutgers are the most disappointing teams this season, Arkansas can’t be too far behind. Even though Calipari used big NIL resources to assemble a roster talented enough to convince AP voters to rank the Razorbacks 16th in the preseason, the team has managed to win just one game in the first two quadrants. Among the schools with more wins in the first two quadrants right now: Central Michigan, Wofford, UIC, Illinois State, Liberty, North Dakota State, UC Riverside, UC San Diego and UC Irvine.
(By my count, three programs from the University of California system currently have more wins in the first two quadrants than Arkansas— and UC Davis is tied with the Razorbacks with one.)
Arkansas is 11-4 overall and 1-4 in the first two quadrants with 10 of its 11 victories coming in either Quadrant 3 or Quadrant 4. As a result, the Razorbacks are down to 48th in the NET and 51st at BartTorvik.com — and CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm has moved them completely out of his projected bracket for the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
In other words, things are not going well.
Is there still time to turn it around?
Of course!
And, it should be noted, that Calipari has multiple big season-turnarounds under his belt over the years. So I wouldn’t rule anything out. Still, it’s impossible to deny that this very expensive team he threw together after leaving Kentucky for Arkansas last April has mostly looked very much like a mismatched team that was just thrown together in a matter of months. The Razorbacks beat Michigan in early December, somehow. But, beyond that, they’ve done nearly nothing. Arkansas’ next best win? That’s probably a victory over Lipscomb that came in the opening week of the season, which is an obvious problem for the program more than two months into this same season.
