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The first two days of March Madness left something to be desired in terms of upsets and drama, but the first day of the Round of 32 brought all of that and more. In the second game of the day, No. 10 seed Arkansas basketball shocked the college hoops world by knocking off No. 2 seed St. John's 75-66 in Providence to advance to the Sweet 16.
This matchup was billed as the clash of Hall-of-Famers on the sidelines, and Rick Pitino and John Calipari did their best to get their teams the win. Calipari, continuing one of the best coaching jobs of his career, spoke about the pressure that his Arkansas players and all players around the nation are playing under after the game, via Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports.
“NIL, if a kid got money, it's just more weight,” Calipari said after the Arkansas win, per Christovich. “And now the families are more involved than they've ever been. Why? NIL. So now all of a sudden they've got the people around them, they’ve got the piano on their back.”
Calipari and Pitino are both working with teams that are built primarily out of the transfer portal as they both get settled in at new schools. Pitino had an excellent season at St. John's and Calipari has helped this Arkansas group grow tremendously over the course of his first season there.
Many of the transfers that Calipari brought in at Arkansas were players of his at Kentucky, such as staring point guard DJ Wagner and big man Zvonimir Ivisic. However, the former Kentucky head coach still had to go out in the portal and get some big names, such as former Florida Atlantic star Johnell Davis.
At times this season, you could see some of the pressure that Calipari's players were dealing with. This Arkansas basketball team started 0-5 in SEC play and lost a lot of close games against teams with less talent than it before eventually getting hot toward the end of the season.
Now, the Razorbacks are playing some very good basketball and are headed to the Sweet 16. Calipari has done an excellent job to get the most out of this Arkansas team despite a multitude of injuries that it is dealing with, and now it will get a chance to go one step further against No. 3 seed Texas Tech in the next round.
