John Calipari on Arkansas roster: 'There is no team'

John Calipari is tasked with having to build his first roster at Arkansas from the ground up.

Left with no scholarship players after the Eric Musselman era, the new Razorbacks head coach is going to have to approach the transfer portal and high school recruiting space with the knowledge that he’s going to be starting from scratch.

“I met with the team — there is no team,” Calipari joked during his introductory press conference on Wednesday. “So now I’ve got to — Hunter’s really, extremely confident — but we’ve got to get a roster together and some of it is a little bit of everything. But we will.

“It may take a little longer because there are kids that put their name in the NBA Draft that are going to go through some of the process, which means, do you wait for that kid? Or do you go take somebody that’s not quite as good? And you’re going to be juggling balls. That’s what we do now.”

Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek said during the presser that he is extremely confident that Calipari can quickly put together a roster that can be compete for championships. The question remains, what type of players is he going to go after?

Will he continue to pump five-star freshman into the program and try to win with them as he did at Kentucky? Or will he focus on the portal and fill his initial Razorback roster with older talent?

Before any of that gets thrown into consideration, however, Calipari laid down his expectations for what he wants out of his initial group at Arkansas.

“If you’re not into basketball, you won’t come here. If you’re smoking, drinking, clubbing,” Calipari continued. “This is about being at a place that is zeroed in on a culture that creates professional habits. And that includes academically. I mean, [at Kentucky], didn’t have any issues. They all finished the term. We didn’t have any PR problems. We had 32 kids graduate, we had six graduate in three years. You can do all that. You can care about the kids and still win.”

With a reinvigorated Calipari ready to hit the ground running in Fayetteville on the recruiting and transfer portal trail. Reportedly expected to have all the NIL money he could possibly want — and Calipari’s presence alone has single-handedly turned Arkansas into one of the most attractive destinations to be for someone in that position.