John Calipari addresses the maturity of Arkansas team since last meeting

On Friday, Kentucky head basketball coach John Calipari spoke with the media for a few minutes about his team’s opponent on Saturday, the No. 18 Arkansas Razorbacks. He knows his team will be in for a battle on Saturday and he spoke highly of the Razorbacks, who currently sit at 22-6 overall.

“Well, first of all what I’ve seen, they will scramble up the game but they never really seem to be out of control. So they’re disciplined in what they’re doing. They’re running motion and curl cuts and spin cuts and backdoors in all the stuff that they’re doing but there’s some organization to it. Yet, whether it’s offense or defense, they’ll scramble up the game a little bit,” the Kentucky head coach said.

He continued praising how hard Arkansas plays every time they set foot on the basketball court.

“They play really hard. They don’t let go of the rope at any point in any game I’ve watched. Watch the Alabama game. They never stopped. They just gave themselves a chance. Whether it be what happened with Tennessee and how hard they play, they’re not gonna beat themselves. You gotta go in there and you gotta beat them. And it’s really hard to do,” Calipari said.

The Arkansas-Kentucky game will be a great game to watch on Saturday for a number of reasons. For one, it’ll be interesting to see how the Wildcats fare if their star guards Tyty Washington and Sahvir Wheeler cannot play.

The Arkansas Razorbacks are no joke.

They have only one loss since Jan. 8 and that one loss was on the road against Alabama. Arkansas is one of the hottest teams in college basketball and they’re coming off a convincing 82-74 win against Florida on Tuesday night.

Arkansas currently sits at 22-6 overall and 11-4 in the SEC, whereas Kentucky is currently 23-5 overall and 12-3 in the SEC.

Arkansas and Kentucky are set to square off on Saturday at 2:00 PM EST in Bud Walton Arena. The game will be nationally televised on CBS.