All eyes have been on John Calipari at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin (Fla.) as the new Arkansas men’s basketball coach continues to make headlines since taking the job in Fayetteville.
While most of the attention has been focused on the building of his first roster with the Razorbacks, Calipari has also been hard at work putting together the non-conference schedule for the 2024-25 slate.
Arkansas is looking to add a home-and-home series — a rarity under the previous regime — will play its annual game in North Little Rock and has its eyes on some showcase opportunities for neutral site matchups.
“Most of the stuff is done of who we’re playing, and then there may be one team I try to do a home-and-home with,” Calipari said.
“But we’re going to play in Little Rock. We’re going to play in Dallas. We want to have the kind of games, you need the national games. You’ve got to play in Madison Square Garden.
“Some of the games I’ve scheduled, you get calls from ESPN and CBS. Different events. Can you do this and this? Until I fill the roster, I probably won’t do the rest of the schedule. But we’re in good shape right now.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, there were no completed and finalized contracts in place, according to response from a Freedom of Information Act request sent by Natty State Sports.
Arkansas was originally scheduled to join Purdue, BYU and Notre Dame for a multi-team event set to take place Nov. 28-29 in San Diego, but a report by college basketball analyst Rocco Miller indicated NC State and Ole Miss were being added to the field with Arkansas no longer expected to participate.
According to a copy of the original agreement for the event, Arkansas would owe a $100,000 penalty for each game in the event of a cancelation.