John Calipari made his coaching debut for the Arkansas basketball team on Wednesday night, and their contest against Lipscomb was much closer than fans were hoping for at times in the second half. The Razorbacks ended up pulling away for a 76-60 win, but they led by just four points with under minutes to go in the game. Tensions were high at that moment.
The Arkansas basketball team won the game, so all is well in Fayetteville. In fact, the biggest news from the game didn't even have anything to do with what happened on the court, but what happened after. John Calipari had his first postgame press conference of the year, and it was a wild one. See some of the best moments for yourself:
Calipari was all over the place after the game. This was a game that Arkansas won, so we can only imagine what Calipari would've been like had his team lost this one.
One thing that Calipari mentioned in that video is the poor three point shooting from his team. That was clearly something he was upset about, and something that Arkansas can focus on going forward. They finished 4/21 from deep which is good for 21.1%, and their leading scorer, Boogie Fland, ended up being 1/8 from beyond the arc.
At the end of the day, there were still some positive takeaways from this game if you're a Razorbacks fan. Arkansas went down 17-12 at one point in the first half, but they outscored Lipscomb 27-11 after that to take a big lead into halftime.
Obviously Lipscomb was able to make a bit of a comeback in the second half and they got the lead down to four late in the game. The Razorbacks can't let teams of that caliber hang around like that, but it was good to see how the team closed out the game. The pressure was obviously all on them, and they closed things out on a 16-4 run. It's not easy to hold any team to four points in seven and a half minutes.
It wasn't ideal that Arkansas was in a close game with Lipscomb at that point in the game, but both times that the Razorbacks weren't looking good, they responded well to close out the half. That's important and that's something positive to take away from the game.
That was obviously just the first game of a long season as well. This team has talent and they should be fine going forward.
We will see John Calipari and his Arkansas basketball team in action again on Saturday for a matchup against a much better opponent. The 16th ranked Razorbacks will heading to Dallas to take on #8 Baylor. The two teams will tip at 6:30 CT from American Airlines Center, and the game will be airing on ESPNU.
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