John Calipari defines this season as the 'most rewarding' for him as a coach

The Arkansas Razorbacks closed out the first year for head coach John Calipari with a win over the Mississippi State Bulldogs. It was a positive note to end what has largely been seen as a rebuild for the Hall of Fame coach.

Despite struggling at times this season, Calipari walked away from the regular season excited. That’s because the growth his team has shown has helped to make this the most rewarding season for him as a head coach.

“Heck of a basketball game,” John Calipari said. “Glad we won it. Love how we fought. And I told them, ‘Man, I’ve done this a long time.’ And this may be the most rewarding season for me because there are a bunch of good kids that struggled early and in their own individual way, and then collectively we struggled early. Yet because they were good people, they stuck together. Our staff never blamed and just kept working with them.”

Arkansas finished the regular season 19-12 and 8-10 in SEC play. That was good for the nine-seed in the SEC Tournament. There, the Razorbacks will take on South Carolina in the first round.

While the end result was a middle-of-the-pack finish in the SEC, at one point it looked like Arkansas was going to struggle all season long in SEC play. To start conference play, the Razorbacks lost five games in a row and at that time John Calipari found himself needing to coach the team hard.

“The trick when you’re going through that is that you must keep picking them up, but you’ve still got to be a truth-teller and you’ve got to hold them accountable,” Calipari said. “But pick them up. Say, ‘I love you, but you’re not doing the right stuff right now.’ You’re playing really hard but you’re not doing enough for us. Playing hard in itself is not good enough, you must, that’s a given. Then, the rest of the stuff you’re going to have to get.”

It’s been a long career now for John Calipari. In 1988, he took over as the head coach at UMass. There, he turned the Minutemen into a power, going to the Final Four. From there, he went to the NBA briefly before returning to college with Memphis and later Kentucky. Along the way, he went to the Final Four another five times and won a national championship. Compared to all of that, his season at Arkansas hasn’t felt as successful, but still his most rewarding.

Calipari can add to his legacy this March, though, and make noise in the SEC Tournament and later the NCAA Tournament. If his Razorbacks team manages that, then it will truly be a special year for Calipari.