Arkansas is a good program getting good results, but when will good turn to great?
John Calipari hasn't been idle or unresponsive in the transfer portal. The Arkansas basketball coach has gotten a two-way frontcourt player, Cooper Bowser, and a scoring guard who can shoot the three, Jeremiah Wilkinson. Those are two pieces Arkansas needed, and that's undeniably good.
However, it's not yet a great portal haul. We can arrive at this conclusion when considering what is happening -- or could soon happen -- elsewhere, as Best of Arkansas Sports explains:
"Calipari has been considered the premier college basketball recruiter for most of the last 30ish years. He went after the best high schoolers on the planet and quickly gave them the reins upon their college arrival. To say it’s worked out well would be an understatement: Calipari’s teams have made 12 Elite Eights, six Final Fours, three national championships and won one title. When Musselman left for Southern California after the 2023-24 season, Arkansas went after the biggest fish in the sea and reeled him in. Razorbacks fans wouldn’t make the trade back if they could.
"But that hasn’t stopped some hemming and hawing about what Calipari is doing this offseason, as fans see Musselman and national-championship winner Dusty May going all-in to the transfer portal and landing some of the biggest recruits available — literally. That included 7-foot-3 Spaniard Aday Mara and Illinois scrapper Morez Johnson Jr., for whom Arkansas refused to pony up.
"Razorbacks fans saw May’s Wolverines become the first team to win a title with a starting lineup consisting entirely of transfers. May even had some Zoom meetings scheduled less than five hours after cutting down the nets. Calipari, meanwhile, is biding his time, slow-playing the portal and staying the course on relying on high-schoolers to help shoulder the load come next season.
"One of the biggest juxtapositions between the two coaches comes in the form of 7-foot-2 center Moustapha Thiam. One of the best centers in the transfer portal, Thiam is considering Arkansas, but appeared to have backed off the seriousness of that consideration. What coincidental timing, then, that May is hosting the big man in Ann Arbor on Monday, a seemingly out-of-nowhere development considering little reported information existed about the two’s mutual interest until late last week."
There can be no debate: Michigan had the best portal class last season. Now Dusty May is in the process of adding to his transfer-heavy roster by bringing in another elite transfer for the new season.
Arkansas fans have every right to ask, "Why can't this be us? Why can't we land the really big fish in the portal?" Michigan was 8-24 in the 2024 season. The Wolverines went through some tough times in the years after their 2013 national championship game appearance but were able to bounce back with another title game run in 2018. Programs elsewhere in the country reinvent themselves quickly. Arkansas is still waiting for its first Final Four since 1995.
John Calipari has done a good job in the portal, but he seems to be unwilling to go all-in and go from good to great. For a program with Final Four aspirations, we have to wonder if Cal's insistence on looking to high school superstars as the anchors of his teams is a match for the modern era of NIL and the portal.