John Calipari reacts to facing Steven Pearl after facing Bruce Pearl for years

John Calipari was seeing double out there opposite Steven Pearl, as Arkansas fell to Auburn 95-73 on the road Saturday. Calipari is used to seeing Auburn, and other schools, with Bruce Pearl on the sideline.

But Steven’s father stepped down from his position and retired from coaching after the 2024-25 season, leaving the younger Pearl in charge. Calipari is certainly rooting for the current Auburn coach, just not against him!

“You won’t believe this, but I don’t look down at the other guy, but I would tell you that it’s a great win for him,” Calipari said postgame. “You know, he’s following his dad, who did a heck of a job here, trying to get it going. You know, this was a big-time win for him. Somebody asked me, I said, ‘Well, I hope they stink tonight, but I want him to do well, because I got a son coaching too,’ and I want him to do well, just not against us. Now, he must have listened to me and said, ‘Yeah, well, how about we do it against you?’”

Calipari was 16-9 against Bruce Pearl in their 25 career meetings, with Pearl getting the final win last February. How long will the new Calipari-Pearl matchup last?  That’s anyone’s guess, but Steven Pearl got one in 2026 and has the leg up, for now.

“You’ve got to give Auburn credit,” Calipari said. “They were desperate, and they played that way. I walked in and said, ‘Not my team.’ I’m burning the tape. Let’s move on. Get on the bus fast. Let’s get out of here. We got out-fought. I told them, you got to take responsibility. We had a great practice and had a great shootaround, so I felt really good until I watched the game unfold and I saw that they were beating us to every loose ball, every 50-50 rebound. No, 80-20 toward us, they still got the ball. They were 12 rebounds up on us at half. You can’t win that game.”

Calipari and Arkansas gave up a season-high 95 points to Pearl’s Auburn squad. There was no answer virtually all night.

“Most of it was layups, or offensive rebound stick-backs, and one leg will throw to the post,” Calipari said. “Now I’ll tell you, Hall played a heck of a game, and they went at them in the first half, and we didn’t really have an answer. We don’t get our post points just from throwing it in there. We get ours by driving it extra passes, lobs. We didn’t get any of that today.

“We’ve played other teams that played hard and were desperate and did it, and we were desperate back and ended up winning games. They were good today. Give them credit. It’s not like we are a bad team. We’re a top 20 team who got spanked today.”