John Calipari wants his Arkansas Razorbacks to think big.
The Hall of Fame coach is used to thinking big and having expectations from his days at Kentucky, of course. Now, Calipari has virtually built a new roster for the Razorbacks since his hiring in April, with only forward Trevon Brazile returning after testing the NBA waters.
He'll take over a program that made it to back-to-back Elite Eights and then the Sweet 16 last season. Expectations were already sky-high, but much of the roster was built by Calipari and his staff.
He certainly doesn't seem to lack talent.
“Just a few months ago, I came in with no team, no staff and no schedule and now we're talking about … how to get them to come together but think big,” Calipari said at a news conference Monday. “You think big but you work big. It's not about wishful thinking. You're not dreaming dreams. It's about what you're trying to accomplish for yourself.
“I'm trying to make them think like kings, because kings think differently.”
While Arkansas isn't the basketball royalty that Kentucky is, the Razorbacks have reached six Final Fours, won the national title in 1994 and returned to the title game a year later.
Calipari, 65 and the winningest active coach in men's college basketball, is no stranger to chasing championships and NCAA tournament berths with mostly new but talented rosters. This is a drastic shakeup even for him.
Calipari added Tennessee transfer Jonas Aidoo, former Florida Atlantic star Johnell Davis and three of his Kentucky players in DJ Wagner, Adou Thiero and Zvonimir Ivisic. Calipari also signed three five-star prospects, with guard Boogie Fland, Karter Knox and Billy Richmond III all ranked among ESPN's 100 recruits in the class of 2024.
Then there's Brazile, who explored both the NBA draft and potential transfers. The 6-foot-10, 220-pounder averaged 8.6 points and 5.9 rebounds last season. Brazile said it was “a no-brainer” to return under Calipari, who was hired after Eric Musselman left to take over at Southern California.
It's not that Calipari wasn't familiar with Brazile before he arrived in Fayetteville, but the forward has made quite an impression since then.
“In the middle of the summer, he came up to me and said, 'Man, you're better than I thought,'” Brazile said. “I said, 'I told you so.'”
Arkansas gave Calipari a five-year contract with an annual base salary of $7 million through April 2029 with a maximum of two years of automatic renewal for NCAA Tournament appearances that would extend the contract through 2031.
With big money comes even bigger ambitions for national titles, which would be the second for Arkansas and Calipari.
Calipari said he can sense the excitement around the program, the campus and even the state. He doesn't want fans to expect a smooth road, but he's not tempering his expectations either.
Not with a coach who has led three programs (Massachusetts, Memphis and Kentucky) to a total of six Final Fours and three national championship games.
“I have a big job here: to make this go well and have people look at us and say, 'What are they doing? How are they doing it?'” Calipari said. “For people to see this and say, 'Wow, here he goes again.'”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
