With a highly anticipated Thanksgiving showdown against No. 5 Duke coming up in less than a week, Arkansas head coach John Calipari still isn’t completely satisfied with where the No. 21 Razorbacks (5-1) are as a team.
Arkansas beat a helpless 0-5 Jackson State squad 115-61 inside Bud Walton Arena on Friday to close a three-game homestand that featured stressful victories over Samford and Winthrop.
Arkansas HC John Calipari says the team let the culture down
“We gotta get our culture down,” Calipari said in his postgame news conference on Friday. “We gotta get the standard of what we play with, how we play. We’re not just breaking off and doing our own thing.
We’re still not connected as a team. That means we run something, one guy’s not where he’s supposed to be.”
The good news for Calipari? His team has already played a tough opponent in a hostile environment. On Nov. 8, Arkansas went to East Lansing, Michigan, to play No. 22 Michigan State, falling in a tightly-contested 69-66 decision.
The Thanksgiving game is not the only time Arkansas will be tested in non-conference play the rest of the way. The Hogs will also tussle with the likes of Houston, Texas Tech and Louisville before a tough SEC slate commences in January.
“I don’t know what happens this next… almost a month,” Calipari said. “We got a bunch of hard games. We could lose ’em all. But I know this: if you want to be them, you gotta beat them. If you don’t play them, you don’t have a shot.
At some point, you have to get in the ring.”
Arkansas and Duke will play at 8 p.m. ET on Nov. 27 at the United Center in Chicago, with coverage on CBS.
