Two of men’s college basketball’s winningest coaches squared off in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday in Kansas’ Bill Self and Arkansas’ John Calipari.
And it went to Calipari and Arkansas.
Thanks to a late 15-5 run to close the second half, the No. 10 seeded Razorbacks knocked off the No. 7 seeded Jayhawks 79-72 at Amica Mutual Pavilion in Providence, Rhode Island — marking the first time in nearly two decades that Self’s program won’t play past the first round.
It appeared that Kansas was going to be able to avoid the upset to Arkansas after KJ Adams hit a jumper to put the Jayhawks up 67-64 with 4:55 remaining in the second half, as the Razorbacks didn’t have an answer for Kansas’ zone defense. However, when Adams went down with an injury shortly thereafter, Arkansas was able to come back and pull the upset off.
As noted by ESPN’s Jeff Borzello, Kansas became the second Associated Press preseason No. 1 ranked team to lose in the first round of the tournament, with the only other team being Kansas itself in 2005.
Arkansas’ win also over Kansas dropped the number of perfect brackets in the country to 0.69%, per the NCAA’s official March Madness X (former Twitter account). That number was then cut down to 0.47% after No. 4 seed Texas A&M beat No. 13 Yale in Denver.
As previously noted by USA TODAY, the odds of having a perfect NCAA Tournament bracket is approximately 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or 1 in 9.2 quintillion for the everyday fan. The odds are improved to 1 in 120.2 billion if one is an avid college basketball fan.
Thursday’s first-round contest was the first meeting between Self and Calipari since 2023, when Calipari was then at Kentucky. The win for Calipari evened his all-time head-to-head record with Self to 7-7, while improving his postseason record against Self to 2-1.
Arkansas now advances to the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday, March 22, where it will face the winner of No. 2 seed St. John’s and No. 15 seed Omaha.
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