No. 18 Arkansas heads to Ole Miss on road not recently traveled
After just one SEC game, No. 15 Arkansas already sees a brighter road ahead.
The Razorbacks (11-3, 1-0, SEC), who lost their first five conference games under coach John Calipari last season, won their league opener Saturday when they defeated then-No. 19 Tennessee 86-75 at Fayetteville, Ark.
Now, Arkansas will try to win its road opener in conference when it faces Ole Miss on Wednesday night at Oxford, Miss.
"Last year we started 0-5 and (people) were saying, ‘We hired the wrong coach. What the heck are we doing?'" Calipari said. "And we turned it around and we got it going. So now we're a little farther ahead than we were a year ago."
The Razorbacks' slow starts in the SEC predate Calipari's arrival. They started 0-3 in their final season under Calipari's predecessor, Eric Musselman, in 2023-24. The victory over the Volunteers on Saturday was their first in an SEC opener since the 2020-21 season.
Arkansas did not win two SEC games last season until February.
"When you're winning games in this league, you're happy," Calipari said. "I said it last year, it doesn't matter who you play, you want to win."
Arkansas is winning in large part because of freshman guards Darius Acuff Jr. and Meleek Thomas.
"We've got two of the best freshmen in the country," Calipari said.
Acuff leads the team in scoring (19.5 points) and assists (6.0), and Thomas is second in scoring (15.4) and tied for second in assists (2.8).
Ole Miss (8-6, 0-1) has an impressive freshman in guard Patton Pinkins, who scored 25 points in an 86-70 loss at Oklahoma, an SEC opener Saturday.
In the last two games, Pinkins is shooting 77.8% (14 of 18) from the floor and 63.6% on 3-pointers (7 of 11).
Rebels coach Chris Beard said Pinkins' performance in his first SEC game was "special," after he came off the bench to make 9 of 11 shots, including 4 of 6 on 3-pointers.
"That was an A game from Patton," Beard said. "I'm not sure we got an A game from anybody else on our roster. I think I have one of the best young players in the league."
Pinkins has started just one game and is averaging just 8.4 points per game, while shooting 53.9% from the floor. He is a team-best 48.6% on 3-pointers and 81.8% on free throws, the highest among Rebels players with more than five attempts.
Beard noted that Ole Miss will need multiple teammates to play closer to Pinkins' recent level if the Rebels are going to have success in the SEC.
"We've got to figure out a way to put our guys in better positions where we can get three or four A game performances in these games to have a chance to win," Beard said.
The loss to Oklahoma dropped the Rebels to 0-6 in games against power conference opponents. And with the nonconference schedule complete, the rest of Ole Miss' games will be against SEC opponents.
"It's an 18-round fight," Pinkins said of the regular-season conference schedule. "We lost round one. We have 17 more."