John Calipari leads Arkansas to SEC Tournament championship win over Vandy
John Calipari has won his first SEC Tournament championship since 2018.
In year two as the Arkansas head coach, Calipari led the Razorbacks to the program’s first conference tournament title in 26 years. 3-seeded Arkansas took down 4-seeded Vanderbilt in the championship game, 86-75, on Sunday afternoon in Nashville. SEC Player of the Year Darius Acuff exploded for 30 points as the Hogs shot 15-24 from three-point range as a team. Acuff was named tournament MVP.
Calipari now becomes the first coach to win the SEC Tournament for two different schools. He has seven total titles as a coach in this event.
It was just a two-point game at halftime in favor of Arkansas, but an 11-0 run midway through the second-half helped the Razorbacks control momentum. A terribly timed field goal drought of eight minutes for Vanderbilt was the nail in the proverbial coffin. Former Kentucky guard DJ Wagner tacked on 11 points, four rebounds, and four assists on a perfect 3-3 mark from deep to twist the knife a bit further for BBN.
Arkansas won three games in three days to win the title, beating 11-seed Oklahoma on Friday and 15-seed Ole Miss on Saturday before polishing off the weekend against the Commodores. The last time Calipari won the SEC Tournament, he was coaching Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the 2017-18 Wildcats. That feels like forever ago.
After winning its first two games at the SEC Tournament earlier in the week, Kentucky was knocked out of the bracket in the quarterfinals, losing to top-seeded Florida for the third time this season on Friday. And of course, the Gators went on to get blasted the very next day by Vandy. It’s been a long time since the ‘Cats have been able to taste victory in this event, one the program has won 31 times. The school with the second-most SEC Tournament titles is Alabama, which only has eight.
Something tells me that Calipari, who famously downplayed this event in recent years, will think the SEC Tournament matters this time around.
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