Arkansas basketball to hire Kentucky's John Calipari as next coach, per reports

Arkansas basketball is hiring John Calipari as its next head coach.

It reads like an unfathomable statement, but according to multiple reports Sunday night, the Razorbacks have lured the former national champion away from Kentucky. Calipari will succeed Eric Musselman, who accepted the head coaching job with the Southern California on Wednesday. 

Calipari has been under heavy heat from the Wildcats’ fan base after another early exit in the NCAA Tournament. Kentucky lost to 14-seed Oakland in the first round of this year’s March Madness, and the Wildcats have not advanced to the second weekend since 2019. On March 26, Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart announced Calipari would return for next season.

"This is what I want. This is what I wanted," Calipari said during his radio show after the endorsement from his athletics director.

"This is why I never left. And now let’s come together and let’s go do something special. We can do it. We’ve done it. Let’s do it again.”

In the end, Calipari changed his mind and opted to leave the Bluegrass State.

Calipari, 65, has been to six Final Fours and been named Naismith coach of the year three times. He lifted his only national championship trophy in 2012 with a Wildcats team led by Anthony Davis. He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.

In 15 seasons at Kentucky, Calipari won six SEC regular-season titles with an overall record of 410-122. No team in the NCAA Tournament has more wins (32), Final Fours (four), Elite Eights (seven) than Kentucky since Calipari’s arrival. He went 16-9 against Arkansas. 

He is regarded as one of the best recruiters in college basketball history, having recruited and helped 58 of his collegiate players become NBA draft picks. Kentucky’s 2024 class ranks second in the country with four signees ranking as five-star recruits. 

Before his arrival in Lexington, Calipari spent 17 combined seasons at Massachusetts and Memphis, taking both schools to a Final Four. He was the national runner-up at Memphis in 2008. 

In between, Calipari spent four seasons as a head coach and an assistant in the NBA. 

Calipari will arrive in Fayetteville with an empty cupboard. Arkansas has just two returnees from last year's team and one freshman signee in the class of 2024. Seven Razorbacks have entered the transfer portal.

Arkansas is coming off a 16-17 campaign that represented the first losing season of Musselman's collegiate coaching career. It's also the first time Arkansas finished under .500 since 2010. According to a database compiled by USA TODAY Sports, Calipari was making $8.5 million annually with the Wildcats. However there is no buyout in his contract that Arkansas needs to pay.