Almost exactly one year ago to the day, Kentuckyathletic director Mitch Barnhart and then-head coach John Calipari sat down for a joint interview on a local television station after the team’s second first-round exit from the NCAA tournament in three years.
Barnhart had already announced Calipari would return for another season but reports of a frigid bond between them remained.
“He’s been married 40-plus years. I’ve been married for 40-plus years,” Barnhart said during the March 29, 2024 interview. “We know how to manage relationships. And I think we’ve been together for 15 years, so we’re sort of, like, semi-married.”
But nine days later, the two sides had divorced.
Calipari’s surprising departure for Arkansas set off a domino effect that rivals anything college basketball has seen over the past decade.
For the Razorbacks, Calipari was a big fish — a name brand with a national title — but he also hadn’t been to the Final Four in a decade.
Meanwhile, coaches with noted legacies such as Dan Hurley and Billy Donovan were floated as potential successors at Kentucky, which is why Wildcats fans threatened to revolt when they signed Mark Pope from BYU. Then BYU turned to an NBA assistant with minimal collegiate coaching experience, Kevin Young, to replace Pope.
At the outset, supporters of all three programs wondered what would happen next. Now they know: With Arkansas, Kentucky and BYU all headed to the Sweet 16, this was a rare chain reaction in the coaching carousel that has seemingly benefited everyone involved.
Despite dealing with injuries early in the season and an 0-5 start to SEC play, the Razorbacks finally hit their stride late. Upsets over 7-seed Kansas and 2-seed St. John’s on opening weekend of the NCAA tournament have given the impression that Calipari is, in fact, back. His replacement in Lexington, Pope, snagged eight wins over top-15 teams during the regular season and erased the bad taste from the program’s recent run of early NCAA tournament exits with this trip to the second weekend. And hissuccessor, Young — who earned a commitment from the No. 1 recruit of the 2025 class, A.J. Dybantsa, shortly after he was hired — seems ahead of schedule with a Cougars squad that has made the Sweet 16 for the first time since Jimmer Fredette led them in 2011.
Let’s take a look at how each of these dominoes has fallen over the course of this season.
To see Calipari in his Arkansas red blazer at last April’s introductory news conference after switching schools — but staying in the same conference — was akin to seeing Roger Clemens in a Yankees uniform, Jerry Rice with the Raiders or John Cena turning heel.
But it was well known Calipari needed a fresh start. Losses to Saint Peter’s (2022) and Oakland (2024) in the first round of the NCAA tournament had robbed him of the edge he once enjoyed as the king of the one-and-done era. But Calipari kept his charm. And he would need it at Arkansas.
The Razorbacks had been to the mountaintop and won a national championship in 1994, but a return to the title game a year later was the last time they had been within reach of another ring. That’s why Arkansas swiped right on an elite coach searching for redemption.
“[When] you talk about some of the best jobs in the country,” Calipari said then, “in basketball, this is one of them.”
How he would restore the program to its former glory still remained a question.
With an NIL coffer full of cash thanks to his billionaire friends, Calipari started to answer by signing promising talent: D.J. Wagner had once been the top recruit in America. Johnell Davis had been a star for a Florida Atlantic team that reached the Final Four in 2023. And Boogie Fland, a five-star recruit and top NBA prospect, decommitted from Kentucky to follow Calipari to Arkansas.
