Sam Malone accidentally gave Willie Cauley-Stein's phone number to Arkansas fans in 2014 and it led to the worst prank of all time

Do you remember that heartbreaking dunk at the buzzer in Fayetteville, Michael Qualls soaring for the putback slam at the buzzer to beat Kentucky in overtime back in 2014? Willie Cauley-Stein finished with just two points and six rebounds in 18 minutes before fouling out in that one — not his best night in blue and white, unfortunately.

And I would say there was a reason for it, because Arkansas fans think there was a specific reason for it. Hog Nation is convinced they threw WCS off his game that night to help steal the ranked home win at Bud Walton Arena, calling their plan “slightly diabolical” in an effort to “gain an edge.”

“Willie Cauley-Stein might find that out and come kill me,” John Nabors, owner of Inside Arkansas and friend of the program, said of his decade-old prank.

Nabors is a good dude, always enjoy catching up at SEC Media Days and the SEC Tournament. I particularly liked his take about the current state of Arkansas basketball this week, saying, “The more this season has gone on, the more I am scared to death to admit that maybe Kentucky fans had it right. That’s scary to me. I don’t even want to fathom that.”

"I'm scared to admit that maybe Kentucky fans had it right. That's scary to me!"

BBN knows our basketball#BBN pic.twitter.com/ffJsPD0QVs

— BigBlueFlavaFlav🇺🇸 (@KentuckyHypeMan) January 9, 2025

We’ll share a beer together on February 1, likely celebrating a big Kentucky win. There, I will tell him that the prank he pulled on WCS in 2014 was by far the worst I’ve ever heard and he should be ashamed to admit he did it on public airwaves.

Let me walk you through his story. Nabors was the student section leader at the time — they call it “The Trough,” which is as gross as it is weird, but that’s not the point. When coming up with Kentucky-specific chants for the game, he had the bright idea of digging through the players’ social media and stumbled upon a walk-on’s phone number (more on that in a second). It was a screenshot retweeted on their page for the world to see, so they texted the number pretending to be a UK volleyball player named Sarah wanting to get in touch with Cauley-Stein.

“Hey, can you give us Willie’s number. I got a new phone and need his phone number,” the text allegedly said, Nabors adding that it was sent two hours before the game.

He said the walk-on just gave Cauley-Stein’s number away, leading to Nabors “blowing (him) up” asking what the star center was doing that night, “just messing with him, saying, ‘Hey, we should hang out,’ all this stuff.”

“It was hilarious,” he said.

We don’t condone this behavior, but college kids will be college kids and you have to respect the hustle at the time. That’s how we got the famous “Call me!” game from DeMarcus Cousins in Starkville — it happens. Sometimes you just have to tip your hat and give credit when it’s due if the prank is good and well-executed. Up to this point, it appeared things were trending toward a strong prank pulled on a key Wildcat.

And then we got to the finale.

WCS apparently told the fake volleyball player he was going to be playing Call of Duty that night after the game — like most college students do. That, apparently, was the ammunition they used.

“We get in there and they’re at warm-ups and we just start yelling about Sarah, about, like, ‘Hey, you gonna play Call of Duty tonight?’ Ooh, it was bad. It was mean, it was mean-spirited. That was fun.”

CALL OF DUTY? You get DIRECT ACCESS to a KENTUCKY BASKETBALL PLAYER in the HOURS leading up to tip-off and the best you can come up with is CALL OF FREAKING DUTY?!? I’m sure that’s haunted Cauley-Stein for years, still waking up in a cold sweat hearing the virtual Xbox gunfire in his dreams, cursing the name “Sarah” for eternity.

Come on, John. That’s terrible.

“Willie Cauley-Stein might come and kill me.”

I was in the student section & we did something slightly diabolical to WCS before the game to gain an edge.

Statute of limitations is up right? pic.twitter.com/oxAxNqFb2f

— John Nabors (@JohnNaborsShow) January 10, 2025

The prank stunk, but I’m more concerned about the walk-on gullible enough to give Cauley-Stein’s number away right before a game to some fake volleyball player. Who could do such a thing?

We have our answer, and we didn’t have to do much digging to find it. The culprit? Mr. Victory Cigar himself, Sam Malone.

“My bad (Willie Cauley-Stein),” Malone wrote on his Instagram story. “I got catfished by diabolical Arkansas fans.”

Dammit Sam. You are to blame for this nonsense.