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Arkansas basketball, John Calipari reportedly to play Michigan in 2024 Jimmy V Classic

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Arkansas basketball, John Calipari reportedly to play Michigan in 2024 Jimmy V Classic

There will be no shortage of early-season intrigue for John Calipari and Arkansas basketball in 2024-25, as one of the sport’s most famous and accomplished coaches takes over a program in the same conference in which he has coached for the past 15 years.

Among the first glimpses the college basketball world will get at the remade Razorbacks will come at the World’s Most Famous Arena: Arkansas will face off against Michigan as part of the 2024 Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden in New York, according to a report Thursday from college basketball insider Jon Rothstein.

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Tennessee will play Miami in the other game of the doubleheader. The games are standalone contests, meaning that the winners don’t face off in any kind of championship matchup.

Since taking over for Eric Musselman on April 10, Calipari has reshaped the Arkansas roster, which was prone to the kind of turnover that plagues any program during a coaching transition.

Calipari has added several players who either played for him at Kentucky or were committed to do so — guards D.J. Wagner and Boogie Fland, forwards Adou Thiero, Billy Richmond and Karter Knox, and center Zvonimir Ivisic — as well as a handful of highly touted transfers from elsewhere, most notably guard Johnell Davis (Florida Atlantic) and center Jonas Aidoo (Tennessee).

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With that influx of talent, the Razorbacks have been widely projected as a preseason top-25 team, with NCAA.com placing them at No. 13, FanDuel at No. 14, CBS Sports at No. 15 and ESPN at No. 16.

It will be the fourth time a Calipari-coached team has competed in the Jimmy V Classic. He previously appeared in the event in 1995 while at UMass and in 2004 and 2007 at Memphis. His teams went 2-1 in those contests.

Arkansas will match up against another team with a first-year head coach, with Dusty May taking over at Michigan for Juwan Howard. Like Calipari at Arkansas, May has had to reconstruct the Wolverines’ roster after coming over from Florida Atlantic, where he coached Davis the past four seasons. Michigan has added a number of notable transfers, including center Vladislav Golden (Florida Atlantic), Roddy Gayle (Ohio State) and Danny Wolf (Yale).

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