John Calipari jokes he was ‘ready to choke myself’ over Arkansas’ 3-point shooting

Despite being behind Trojan Trojans on half, the Arkansas Razorbacks had a massive effort in the second half to avoid an upset. It was a game that head coach John Calipari felt shooting played a big role for the Razorbacks.

After the game, Calipari joked about wanting to choke himself because of Arkansas’ three-point shooting. In particular, he called out that his big men were the ones making threes instead of the guards and wings.

“Who are the guys who made the most? You four-man and your five-man,” John Calipari said. “They are the ones who made them, Adou (Thiero) and (Zvonimir Ivisic). Then we sprinkled one or two others in. But one had six and one had two or three, I don’t have a stat sheet in front of me. So now you have eight, and that’s from your four and five.”

For the game, Arkansas shot 10 for 23, or 43.5 percent from three-point range for the game. Ivisic was by far the most productive player Arkansas had from three, making six of seven shots from deep. Among guards, Boogie Fland led the Razorbacks with two three-pointers made.

“Normally you’d have eight and that comes from your guards, your wings. Thank God, right? I told the fans out there, you’ve got to watch the first half and go, ‘Oh my God, but we did everything right.’ We moved the ball, we had it, boop, wide open miss,” Calipari said. “Anything from the outside, the guy’s got it, miss. Another one here missed. I was ready to choke myself, like, come on.”

Despite some struggles shooting from three, Arkansas outscored Troy by 17 points in the second half. That gave Arkansas a 65-49 win.

“Again, it’s a good group. I enjoy coaching them. I hold them to a high standard. I tell them that. I don’t back up. This is what it is. How do you finish a game? How do you massage the ball? How do you open up late? How about making free throws late? We’re a really good free throw team. So we have things to work on.”

John Calipari then went on to add some praise to Troy and compare them to his UMass team from the 1990s. Especially for how physical and energetic the Trojans were throughout the game, putting pressure on Arkansas.

“But let me say this, anybody who wants to play Troy, I say don’t. I’ll be honest with you, I said it on the radio, they remind me of my UMass teams. They beat us back. Four guys to the glass to go back, dive on the floor. Three different guys head to try to get the ball. They get 70 percent of them and if they make shots – now we wore them out with, and that’s why we picked up — because if they’re making threes, they’re doing what they’re doing defensively.” Calipari said. “And it was a bit of a rugby match. Come now. You drove and you got pushed … then our guys had to get physical. I said, ‘Whatever they do to you, do to them. Whatever it is.’ They were good. Scott, he does a great job.”

Arkansas will be back in action Monday night. There they accept The Pacific Ocean in a home game where Calipari will look for more consistent shooting.