We conducted our annual Candid Coaches series back in August and asked more than 100 Division I staff members who they believed was the best high-major coaching hire of 2024. The leading vote-getter was John Calipari. After that came Dusty May. Coincidentally, those two men’s teams will meet late Tuesday when Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks play May’s Michigan Wolverines in the nightcap of the 30th annual Jimmy V Classic inside New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Is it the best Jimmy V Classic doubleheader ever?
Definitely not.
But the first game will include Tennessee, which moved to No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll on Monday; the undefeated Vols are playing a Miami team on a six-game losing streak. After that concludes, a matchup that appears more competitive on paper will tip, at which point Calipari will need to guide the Razorbacks to an upset of Michigan or else they’ll drop to 7-3 on the season, including 0-3 against top-85 opponents at BartTorvik.com.
Needless to say, that would not be ideal for Calipari considering Arkansas was ranked 16th in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll — but also because the third loss would come to a fellow first-year coach at a new school whose team wasn’t supposed to be as good as Calipari’s, and also because the third loss would come just three days after Calipari’s old school, Kentucky, upset Gonzaga and improved to 8-1 with its own first-year coach, Mark Pope, who now has UK ranked fifth in the AP Top 25 poll.
There is no shortage of talking points.
Michigan-Arkansas is scheduled to start about 30 minutes after Tennessee-Miami, probably a little after 9 ET. Michigan is No. 16 in Tuesday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings. The Wolverines are 8-1 with wins over Wisconsin, Iowa and Xavier. They’re listed as 4.5-point favorites against Arkansas, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.
