Pick any sport at the Division I level and you’ll find very few degrees of separation between most of its head coaches.
Sometimes, the path-crossing spans entire hemispheres.
That’s certainly the case with the last two Arkansas basketball coaches. When most fans think of Eric Musselman and John Calipari, they reminisce on their annual battles on the hardcourt leading the Razorbacks and Wildcats, respectively. Or, of course, how Calipari succeeded Musselman in Fayetteville after the latter headed to USC for a list of reasons that’s still unspooling to this day.
But that wasn’t the first time Calipari succeeded Musselman as the head coach of a high-level basketball team.