John Calipari on Arkansas struggles: ‘Are we playing the right people?’

Arkansas fell short against Florida Saturday, 71-63, and head coach John Calipari questioned if he was playing the right people in a pivotal SEC game like that.

The loss dropped the Razorbacks to 11-5 on the season, they’re out of the top 25 and Florida is cruising at 15-1 on the season, ranked No. 8. Simply put, Calipari wanted to know where the effort and emotion was.

It certainly didn’t show up across 40 minutes in the coach’s eyes.

“Top 10 team, hold them to 39% from the floor, 28% from the three, out rebound us by 10. A bunch of those were at the end of the game, offensive rebounds. We miss a bunch of free throws, miss a bunch of layups, and we still have a chance, and then we start missing free throws. So I gotta look and say, Are we playing the right people? Are we playing the right way,” Calipari said postgame. 

“We’re getting shots. We’re getting layups. We got to the free throw line. We did all the stuff we’re trying to do. And then the other thing is, there was emotion shown in that game, in one play, what was it? He dunks, the crowd goes crazy. And why isn’t that us? Why aren’t you absolutely excited about playing?” 

Calipari doubled down on the effort request. He simply needs more from his players if Arkansas is going to be successful and make a run.

“I think part of it is, if someone doesn’t play well, they can’t get out of their own way,” Calipari said. “But you don’t have to play great. You don’t even have to play good. Just defend. Dive on the floor, talk. Be a great teammate. Chest bump, get everybody going, and you’ll bounce out of that. We haven’t learned that yet. I got to do a better job. We got to make some shots. Do I got to play some different people? Probably, maybe that big lineup is the answer for us for a while you say, well, you won’t shoot it as well. They ain’t shooting it well right now, so let’s, you know, it’s, we just got to figure stuff out.”

They’ll have to figure it out fast as Calipari and company travel to LSU and Missouri in their next two games before returning home against Georgia. After that, Arkansas has ranked games against Oklahoma and Kentucky leading into February.

Perhaps by then Calipari will play the right people.