LEXINGTON, Ky. — As Rupp Arena buzzed more than an hour before game time, Jody Weaver stood proudly decked out in Kentucky Wildcats gear and holding a blue and white “Welcome Home Coach Cal” sign, with the UK emblem in the middle.
“He’s one of us,” Weaver said about the show of support for her team’s former head coach. “But I do think he’s gonna get booed.”
She was right. When Arkansas head coach John Calipari finally emerged from the tunnel Saturday night, striding onto the same floor where he served as head coach of Kentucky for 15 seasons, the boos rained down — not unhinged, but unequivocal. The response was actually louder for Kentucky coach Mark Pope, walking out of the opposite tunnel minutes later to an opposite reception, Big Blue Nation authoring a full-throated love song with the ex awkwardly looking on.
Coach Cal is booed by the Kentucky crowd in his return to Rupp Arena 😳
📺 ESPN pic.twitter.com/2V1G0hColn
— ESPN (@espn) February 2, 2025
That string of moments just before tipoff is what this game — and for some Wildcats fans, this season — had been building toward. Calipari, less than a year removed from leaving (fleeing?) Kentucky for an SEC foe, was back in Rupp to face the scornful music. It was electric, so much so that the game felt destined to be a celebratory afterthought. Instead, Arkansas danced to an 89-79 road upset over No. 12 Kentucky, Calipari unexpectedly overshadowing his own homecoming.
“I gotta be honest with you: I looked up a couple times and I thought we were losing because I kept looking at the Kentucky (score) instead of Arkansas,” said Calipari, his cardinal-red shirt a staggering sight against a blue and white backdrop. “I mean it’s 15 years here, you know? Coming back and playing this well — we played well, we did.”
Weaver was not alone in her pregame sentiment. There were plenty of mixed emotions in the crowd, collectively and individually, a conflicted cocktail of vindication, appreciation, revenge and closure toward a man who delivered hundreds of wins and a national championship for Big Blue Nation before the relationship soured. Amid that initial cascade of jeers, Calipari waved and shook hands with a number of Kentucky fans seated near the bench and even shared a hug with Pope. Despite Rick Pitino’s best efforts earlier in the week, the boos won out. Yet in the end, it was not the comeuppance BBN envisioned.
Arkansas, loser of six of its previous seven entering the evening, held a defiant 46-45 lead at halftime despite Kentucky shooting 59 percent from the floor and 7 for 10 from 3-point range. The Razorbacks then started fast out of the locker room, ripping off an 8-0 run. Kentucky never cut it closer than 6 points the rest of the way.
The Wildcats (15-6, 4-4 SEC) went cold, shooting just 3 for 13 from deep in the second half and committing 14 turnovers on the evening. Arkansas (13-8, 2-6 SEC) beat them down the floor all night, winning an 18-5 advantage in fast break points and converting 13 of 25 from distance — the most since the team made 15 against Maryland Eastern Shore back in November.
“Today was a good one. Good win for the kids,” Calipari said. “I told them, ‘I’m coaching fearless today.’ I wanted them to play fearless.”
Calipari wasn’t the only former Wildcat to play spoiler. Transfer forward Adou Thiero led Arkansas with 21 points and eight rebounds. Fellow transfer DJ Wagner, after going scoreless in the first half, finished with 17 points and eight assists, including a few daggers down the stretch that scuttled any wisp of Kentucky momentum. Zvonimir Ivisic — another UK transfer — had 14 points on 4-of-7 shooting from 3-point range, and freshman Karter Knox, who decommitted from Kentucky and followed Calipari to Arkansas, had 10 points and a silencing fast break dunk late in the second half.
“I called those guys in together (this week) and asked if they were going to be OK coming back here. And they all said, ‘We’re fine, we’re worried about you.’ That’s the kind of team I have,” Calipari said. “They were good, and they played well today.”
“Everybody else on the team had our backs and knew how much this game meant to all of us,” Thiero said. “Nobody wants to come back and lose. Getting that dub, we had to do that for (Coach). He’s always had our backs, so tonight we felt like we had to really have his.”
Despite the loss, there’s no buyer’s remorse in the Commonwealth. Kentucky, coming off a top-10 road win over Tennessee on Tuesday, is safely on course for the NCAA Tournament with six wins against top-15 opponents. But it was a reminder of how far Pope and the Wildcats still have to go. Calipari’s tenure hit all the benchmarks in Lexington: five-star recruits, NBA lottery picks, conference titles, four Final Fours, one national championship. But those things are more than just aspirational or occasional at Kentucky and why Calipari’s string of early SEC tourney and NCAA Tournament exits nudged him to Fayetteville.
Pope’s honeymoon has rightfully extended into February of his first season, thanks to the early success of a team thrown together in short order, as well as the way Pope has embraced the pride and expectation that comes with the job. A win over Calipari would have felt like a meaningful plot point in that journey, but it wouldn’t have made the season a success. Much like his predecessor, Pope will ultimately be measured by what he does in March and early April.
“My guys are really hurting in the locker room,” Pope said after the game. “They see everything and hear everything, they know what matters. They are getting an up-close look at how much it means to the people they are playing for.
“If there was anything about tonight, it was all kind of complicated, conflicted, upside down, twisted-up feelings with everybody in BBN. Certainly, our guys felt that coming out of this game.”
A dampened murmur of boos returned in the final minute of game action, but this time they were directed at the product on the court and the reality on the scoreboard. No one in the stands was confused about who was winning as lines of blue began streaming for the exits. Things briefly got chippy near the Arkansas bench, when jawing between players from both teams led to a lengthy review and offsetting technical fouls. By the time the delay was over, much of the arena had cleared out. The crowded tunnel where all eyes were fixated a couple of hours earlier was mostly bare when Calipari triumphantly jogged back into it, a true through-the-looking-glass exit.
The future remains promising for Pope and Kentucky, and is at least a tinge brighter for Calipari and Arkansas, as well, after one of the team’s best performances of the season. But Saturday night in Rupp Arena was all about the past, Calipari reaching back to pull out a remarkable, much-needed win in a familiar setting.
So it was oddly fitting when his last words of the night were not about his new school but instead about the one he left — even if neither side has yet to fully leave the other behind.
“Mark Pope is doing a great job. We kind of got them today — just move on. Next game. This is one game. And if anybody takes it as more than that, you’re crazy,” Calipari said. “Mark’s done great. He was the right guy for the job.”
It’s the takeaway Kentucky fans were hoping for. Just not the way they expected to hear it.
(Top photo: Jordan Prather / Imagn Images)
