Arkansas hired John Calipari to lead the men's basketball program to its first national title since 1994, the year Nolan Richardson won the crown with the Razorbacks and his “40 Minutes of Hell.”
Richardson told ESPN on Thursday that Calipari has the “backing” and capabilities to end the 30-year drought and win a national title.
“I don't see why it wouldn't be a job where [Calipari] They could come in and win a national championship,” Richardson said. “I can see they can do it. “I don't know another coach who could do better than Calipari by hiring him.”
Richardson said he spoke briefly with Calipari after he accepted the job last month following his long stint at Kentucky and congratulated him.
Since then, Calipari has added a decorated collection of talent in his first offseason at Arkansas. Boogie Fland, the five-star recruit who originally committed to Calipari at Kentucky, and Johnell Davis, who led Florida Atlantic to the 2023 Final Four, anchor a group that could compete for the SEC crown in 2024-25 .
Richardson said Calipari has already earned the support of the fan base and expects Razorbacks fans to fill Bud Walton Arena (capacity 19,368) in Fayetteville, Arkansas, next season.
“He has their support,” Richardson told ESPN. “Fayetteville is probably the best job in the world to me as far as the fans go. A lot of times, the fans are for the coach who is the coach right now. Everyone is in the current mind.” If you come in and do a good job, you'll have all the fans behind you. You have 20,000 people in the arena. Arkansas has tremendous facilities. A bad night in Arkansas is 17,000 people. “That's unheard of.”
But Richardson added that the game has changed a lot since he last led Arkansas to a national title 30 years ago. The transfer portal and NIL rules have turned recruiting into a race to “buy the best player,” she said.
If that's the game, he said, then Arkansas is also positioned to compete in the new landscape.
“We have everything up here,” he said. “You've got Tyson Foods, Walmart, JB Hunt. You've got some heavy, heavy, heavy hitters in this little corner of Arkansas.”
As the only former coach who knows what it's like to win a national title at Arkansas, Richardson said his advice to Calipari is simple: He wants him to stick to the plan that helped him find success early in his tenure at Kentucky.
“It's about recruiting,” Richardson said. “Before it was about recruiting and developing, and now it's about recruiting the best players. I think [Calipari] is going to do that. I think he has already proven that he is an excellent recruiter by meeting all the requirements. My advice is don't do anything different to what you've always done: look for the best players and you'll have the chance to be the best.”
