John Calipari’s not done yet: Sweet 16 run after besting Rick Pitino adds new chapter to complicated career

Proventise, Ri-when Arkansas beat Georgia 68-65 on January 22 in Vitelville, was the reason for an atheist celebration of the season. One of the March or April group – something John Calibari never does.

Razorbacks was 12-7 by the end of that night, but it was still on the right track to be embarrassing volatility in the first year in Calibari. They started 0-5 in the Supreme Education Council and they were only 64 points in shooting by 38 %. The team looked like a chaos. But this victory over Georgia was the first team match in the league, so Calibari bought the champagne and rejoiced as if they won the SEC title.

truly?

“Oh yes – Hell yes,” said Calabary is a wet and victorious CBS SPORTS in his career to the car at the back of the Amica Muteal Pavilion on Saturday. He added: “My idea was to build a program, which is the first year and I do not want to go out and mad-I did not expect us to be 0-5. I said:“ This will be more difficult than I thought. “

Arkansas lost three days after his land in front of Oklahoma, and in 1-6 in the Supreme Education Council, a terrible return on the horizon waved on the horizon to RUPP Arena after that. Calibari was forced to wait a whole week between games before returning to the place where he trained for 15 years and left him, and practically in the cover of the night, last April in the fourth final.

Almost no one thought that Arkansas was hitting Kentucky again on February 1. But he beat Kentucky, 89-79, and the razorbacks season has turned forever because of it. The pigs have gone 10-5 since that night, and the tenth victory on Saturday in Brudence No. 2 Seed St. John’s 75-66 In the second round of the western region.

Win in Kentucky in February.

Victory over Rick Betino in March.

John Calibari, who now led four different programs to Sweet 16, triumphed again when many assumed the opposite.

The 66-year-old finds himself in a season of very appropriate salvation for a great profession, one full of turbulent victories, huge disappointment, and endless paraffado-all on his way. For good, bad, height and low.

The Battle of the second round was on Saturday, a convincing but ugly game with 44 errors, 58 free throws and shooting of 3 hateb NCAA championship date.

“Was it an ugly game? Or was it an exciting game? Like, both?” Calibari said. “An ugly exciting game. You know I don’t care. It may be an ugly game and I am happy because we are moving.”

In any way, that is, how to overcome two housesQ.

Arkansas put 46 coating points, more than St. John allowed a match throughout the season. SJU was held to 28 % of the field, tied with the worst shooting of any team trained in Betino in 77 of the NCAA Championship (1995 Eight Eight against North Carolina).

“They got 28 offensive rebounds and we still win, which is crazy,” said Calibari.

Not more crazy than the place where Arkansas now finds itself, heading to Sweet 16.

Calibari told me: “The whole idea is that I want to be one of these programs every year has an opportunity to win the national title.” ))

As the game approaches its proximity, CBS cameras caught the Calibari Illin wife and his middle child, his daughter Megan, crying in the stands. They were overcome with emotion in what was happening in front of their eyes.

“It was just two young years, did you know?” Megan told CBS SPORTS. “Mostly, why I want my father to win is that I want him to be happy, because I love him. I don’t care about basketball. I will not consider myself a fan of basketball. I am a fan of John Calibari, so I feel worth it. He worked hard. This team has worked hard.”

Megan added: “It was justified.” “He never said that, but I assume he will feel this way. I feel this way for him.”

“I also do,” Elien Calibari told CBS SPORTS. “There are always the first round disturbances every year, all the time. I think this is part of the satisfaction you get is part of the accumulation of it as well. This contentment is greater.”

Few, if any, was more malicious coaches because of their mistakes in training and the construction approach like Calipari. The man won a national title. In 2015, he had almost withdrawn from the first unacceptable season since Bob Knight. Reflect on what the employment means at the highest levels for more than a decade. He had some brutal fluctuations in the winter of his career in Kentucky – the most reputable Saint Peter in 2022 and Auckland in 2024. The dynamic in Lexington became toxic. Caliparis was going out.

Arkansas was an unexpected lifeline.

Bring many of his staff and Kentucky players and committing him too. After shocking all of this, people did not realize that many things had not changed with how he approached training, he was once again called out of time and stubborn.

John Calibari hits the land in Arkansas after the last ugly chapter in Kentucky “absorbs”

Dennis Dod

The move to Vitelville did not make it easier. Silently, taxes have been imposed on the cableris season like any.

Megan said: “It seemed to be a lot of pressure, for some reason, this year – I would like to say until the past years did not feel such pressure much,” Megan said. “It is still really difficult to read such terrible things about your father, so I feel that this may be part of it for me. I feel very happy for it so much that it can prove that many people are wrong. Frankly, I think he loves it. I think he loves to be weak.

On Saturday, it was possible to have a great moment for Petino in his late revival. Many believed that it was supposed to be. As expected, the number of St. John Al -Ahmar in Arkansas Qarmazi in Proventins was surrounded on Saturday, where Biteno brought a remarkable banner in 1987.

Calibari, as he often did before, spoil it.

This was an unimaginable fact for him a month ago. Maybe even a week ago.

Calibari said of his players: “Many say about these children and how they grew up.” “My employees have not retracted.

He panicked because he wondered how he could have been very bad very quickly immediately in a great second. Freshman Guard Boogie Fland went before Georgia. The ongoing assumption was in the weeks that followed that he played his last match with Razorbacks. Fortunately, Fland returned to the NCAA championship and gave Arkansas the depth necessary to overcome the coaches of a three -day hall: Bill Self and Beetteno.

When doing this, Calipari is the fourth coach only wins the successive championship games against NAISMITH MEMOREAL Hall of Famers. On Saturday, the fourteenth place was in 24 meeting between Calipari and Pitino that Cal got. Many are considered by many a short list of the greatest university coaches ever. Calipari’s name has not been presented in these discussions. One of the greatest recruits ever? The best. Tactical savior? Not according to his critics.

Calibari knows that. Attention. He disturbs him. There is a little that he can do about it.

But now Calipari is the only coach who falls three times in the NCAA championship.

“He is definitely a competition,” Megan said of her father’s dynamics with Betino. “Regardless of those who deny it, they had a very similar professional path.”

On Thursday and Friday they will play 16 games in this tournament and John Calibari will continue to train in it; Arkansas faces 3 Texas Tech seed. It will be the sixteenth time for Cal in the regional semi -finals. There is no active coach who has more.

Three hundred and six days ago, Auckland beat Kentucky 80-76. Calibari’s profession seemed to swing on the edge. Something should have changed. He decided to jump, under different circumstances more than ever in its four decades of training.

“I am not angry at anyone,” said Calibari. “What happened to me is a blessing, and that I was able to do what I did in Kentucky, Mumtis and Massachusetts, and now let me try to do it here.”

As it was always, Calipari – and do so – tries to – his way. Because this should be the way. For the sake of goodness, for anything that he brings.

This tournament can exactly raise you as it can crush you. Few understand that better than Cal. Perhaps most of the year of surreal training in his life live for another week and at least another game. Arkansas in Sweet 16 and John Calipari finds ways to prove many people.