In college hoops, battle-tested teams tend to do well when March Madness comes around.
Squads who played through a tough non-conference slate or faced a gauntlet within their conference are able to use their experience against elite competition – and with close games – to fight their way through the nail-biting matchups that the NCAA Tournament always presents.
The defending national champion Florida knows this after the Gators won four games in the Big Dance by six points or less en route to the title after navigating a historically tough SEC. Auburn also reached the Final Four after surviving a similar schedule.
No. 1 overall seed Duke met its demise after melting down against Houston in the Final Four and blowing a sizable second-half lead. After obliterating weak ACC opposition for the last three months, the Blue Devils seemed to have lost their ability to win close games because they simply hadn’t been in many of them.
Arkansas, too, knows the value of pushing yourself in the regular season from its days under Nolan Richardson. After winning the national title in 1994, the Hogs played a brutal schedule that included eight games – about a quarter of the schedule – against teams that went on to make the Sweet 16 in 1995.
Tulsa, Georgetown, Memphis and John Calipari’s UMass team were on the non-conference slate, and the Hogs faced Mississippi State and Kentucky two times apiece. Additionally, the Hogs faced Missouri in the non-con and Florida during SEC play, both of whom had appeared in the Sweet 16 the previous season.
Richardson’s battle-tested Razorbacks came within inches of securing a second consecutive national title, falling short to UCLA in the championship game. Thirty years later, the former UMass man turned Head Hog Calipari looks set to assemble a non-conference schedule rivaling that of Richardson’s best Arkansas teams.
The Hogs have assembled a promising roster that has them floating near the top 10 in most analysts’ preseason top 25 rankings. CBS’ Jon Rothstein labeled Arkansas as the second-best team in the SEC next year behind defending national champion Florida, and that was before it added four-star seven-footer Paulo Semedo to the mix.
Calipari has always been a coach who prioritizes brand-building, often scheduling marquee non-conference matchups to get the spotlight on his program while giving his talented players an early-season test. His Kentucky teams regularly traveled to New York or other big cities to face other blue-bloods like Duke, Kansas or UConn.
The Head Hog has assembled an absolute gauntlet of a non-conference slate for Arkansas in the upcoming season, with the most recent scheduling announcement giving the Razorbacks a prime opportunity for some sweet, sweet vengeance.
Rothstein reported on Friday that the Hogs would face Texas Tech on December 13 in the American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas Mavericks. That will mark a rematch of their March clash in the Sweet 16 which saw Arkansas blow a 16-point lead in the second half to lose a game in which it only trailed for 63 seconds. The Red Raiders mounted the second-largest comeback in Sweet 16 history to end the Hogs’ season in heartbreaking fashion.
Head coach Grant McCasland’s squad projects as a top 10 team next season – as high as No. 3 in the country, per ESPN – after returning Big 12 Player of the Year JT Toppin and guard Christian Anderson as well as adding some nice portal pieces. Dealing with the physicality and athleticism of Toppin and the Red Raiders will be an excellent test for the Hogs before SEC play starts up.
Texas Tech adds to a stacked non-conference slate that includes neutral site matchups against Duke (Chicago) and Houston (Brooklyn), home games against Louisville and Baylor and an away game against Michigan State. These enticing matchups against blue bloods and title-winning coaches will have Arkansas ready for an SEC slate that projects to be every bit as tough in 2025-26 as it was last season.
This particular Murderers’ Row of foes also puts the Hogs in uncharted scheduling waters.
With the addition of the Red Raiders to the 2025-26 schedule, Arkansas will now face every team that advanced to the Elite Eight back in March. According to research from Best of Arkansas Sports, this is the first time a team has ever played the entire Elite Eight field the following season since at least 1985, when the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams.
Before 1985, programs were a lot less likely to travel across the country for multiple non-conference games in a season. That more region-centric scheduling means that, at least on paper, Arkansas’ 2025-26 slate is likely the most difficult non-conference schedule in college basketball history.
The Hogs will play Auburn (preseason No. 19, per CBS), Tennessee (No. 22), Florida (No. 6) and Alabama (No. 14) in the SEC while squaring off with the Red Raiders (No. 7), Blue Devils (No. 9), Spartans (No. 16) and Cougars (No. 2) in non-conference play. With the SEC looking set for another strong year top-to-bottom, the Hogs will have the opportunity to put together an impressive tournament resume that few teams can rival.
John Calipari Appears to Have Major Faith in This Squad
That’s a major u-turn from last season, when Arkansas’ non-conference strength of schedule was a measly 250th in the country, per KenPom. The Hogs faced four high-major opponents, defeating No. 14 Michigan and Miami while losing to Illinois and No. 8 Baylor. Michigan (5-seed), Illinois (6-seed) and Baylor (9-seed) were all NCAA Tournament teams, but none of them quite lived up to expectations in the regular season.
Miami, meanwhile, was one of the worst teams in the country, finishing with a paltry 7-24 record after head coach Jim Larranaga stepped down in December, just a few weeks after losing to Arkansas. The loaded SEC helped save Arkansas’ resume as a bubble team, but the weak non-conference schedule did it no favors.
It’s not entirely Calipari’s fault, as Illinois and Michigan were both viewed as Big Ten contenders while Baylor was one of the top teams in the Big 12 entering the season. He also didn’t have a full offseason to create a schedule, as he had to build a staff and roster essentially from scratch heading into year one on the job.
Arkansas didn’t choose to play Miami, either, as they were an assigned opponent in the SEC/ACC Challenge. The Hurricanes were also expected to at least by decent last year, and the program is just a couple years removed from a Final Four appearance under Larranaga.
This year, Coach Cal is not taking any chances. The Hogs got the benefit of a much better ACC opponent draw in Louisville, who tied for second in the conference last season just one game behind Duke. Head coach Pat Kelsey has also put together the No. 4 transfer class in the country, per 247Sports, and brings in five-star point guard Mikel Brown Jr.
Adding in the showdowns with Duke, Michigan State and the trio of Big 12 contenders – on top of another loaded SEC schedule – will position Arkansas well when Selection Sunday comes around. It also bodes well for the Hogs’ changes in March, as these early tests will be vital experience for the team, especially five-star freshmen Darius Acuff Jr. and Meleek Thomas.
This aggressive scheduling by Calipari also reads as a show of confidence in his team. He wouldn’t have signed up for these big-time matchups if he didn’t think he had the guns to compete with these other heavyweight programs. Last year’s roster had a lot fewer proven pieces, but this year he returns a solid core of veterans alongside the talented newcomers. That uptick in trust goes hand-in-hand with ratcheting up the non-conference competition level.
Iron sharpens iron. Just like the legendary Richardson-era teams, Calipari’s 2025-26 group will test their mettle in high-profile duels in the kind of schedule no college basketball team has dared to take on before.
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