Arkansas turned its season around when John Calipari visited his old Kentucky home a year ago.
This season, the No. 15 Razorbacks will look to defend their 12-0 home record when the Wildcats and coach Mark Pope — the right choice as his successor at Kentucky, Calipari said — visit Fayetteville, Ark., for a Southeastern Conference game on Saturday evening.
“We needed to beat somebody,” Calipari said of the Razorbacks’ 89-79 win at Lexington last Feb. 1, which stopped a 1-6 slide. “Now the only significance of the game is, we need to keep winning.
“Mark Pope is doing a great job. He’s the right guy for that job. I wouldn’t want to play those guys the next couple of games.”
Arkansas (16-5, 6-2) enters its only meeting with Kentucky this season following another Darius Acuff Jr. showcase in an 83-79 victory at Oklahoma on Tuesday. The Razorbacks had lost their previous two SEC road games.
Freshman point guard Acuff had 21 points, 10 assists and no turnovers to help the Razorbacks overcome a 13-point deficit. His driving layup and free throw gave the Razorbacks an 81-79 lead with 20 seconds remaining.
Trevon Brazile blocked Xzayvier Brown’s layup on the Sooners’ next possession, leading to two clinching free throws by Meleek Thomas (16 points).
“We know how good a team we are, so wins on the road really define you as a team,” Thomas said. “The most important thing is to carry that momentum into the next game. We want to continue to stack wins.”
Acuff (20.2 points per game) and Thomas (15.2) are the highest-scoring freshman teammates in Division I.
Acuff, a six-time SEC freshman of the week, has had at least 15 points and five assists in 15 games this season, the most by an SEC freshman since Kentucky’s John Wall had 15 in 2009-10. Calipari coached Wall then.
“I could say one word — special,” Thomas said to describe Acuff.
Kentucky (14-7, 5-3) enters Saturday’s game looking for its own turnaround of sorts. The Wildcats had a five-game SEC winning streak snapped emphatically in an 80-55 blowout loss at No. 18 Vanderbilt on Tuesday.
“Listen, we were a disaster tonight,” Pope said. “We got punched pretty good, and we didn’t respond at all.”
The Wildcats have lost four games by double digits this season, the low point a 94-59 drubbing by then-No. 11 Gonzaga in Nashville, Tenn., on Dec. 5.
“We’ve been here before, and we ran off five straight in the SEC,” Pope said. “We know we can do it. We have to find some way to avoid this disastrous night, but the only thing we can do now is move forward.”
Against Vanderbilt, Otega Oweh scored 20 points and Denzel Aberdeen had 15 for the Wildcats, who shot 32.2% from the field and were 6 of 24 from long distance. They trailed 29-12 eight minutes into the game and 43-23 at halftime.
“We can’t be down double digits anymore, especially in SEC play, because there are a lot of great teams ahead of us,” Aberdeen said.
Oweh (16.3 ppg) and Aberdeen (12.4) are the only Wildcats averaging in double figures in scoring.
Arkansas has won four of the last six meetings between the teams. Kentucky is 2-6 against Top 25 teams this season.
