Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari has mentored a litany of elite guards. He’s coached plenty of NBA guards. What separates his legends from the rest, though, is that they immediately hit the ground running in what is typically a single season of college ball..
Derrick Rose didn’t wait. Neither did John Wall or De’Aaron Fox.
Through a dozen games this year, neither has Darius Acuff Jr.
The question surrounding Arkansas’s dynamic freshman point guard isn’t whether he belongs in the Calipari lineage, but rather how high up the ladder he should be after 12 games, five of which were against elite competition.