John Calipari has another star freshman. How is Mark Pope planning to stop him?
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- Kentucky basketball will have to try and stop Arkansas freshman guard Darius Acuff Jr.
- Acuff is averaging more than 20 points per game for the Razorbacks this season.
- Arkansas is coached by former UK coach John Calipari.
Mark Pope’s Kentucky basketball team doesn’t have much time to lick its wounds from an embarrassing 25-point midweek defeat at No. 18 Vanderbilt.
The Wildcats’ Saturday night game at No. 15 Arkansas will pit Pope’s group against one of the best SEC squads this season: Ex-UK coach John Calipari has piloted the Razorbacks to wins in six of their eight league games so far, including a 25-point home romp over that same Vanderbilt team less than two weeks ago.
And there’s a familiar reason for the major success that the Hogs are enjoying.
Freshmen are all the rage in college basketball once again, and Calipari has two of the best in the sport as part of his second Arkansas team. Darius Acuff Jr. (20.2 points per game) and Meleek Thomas (15.2 points) are Arkansas’ top two scorers, and both possess elite three-level scoring ability.
“Their young freshmen have really come along,” Pope said Thursday during his weekly press conference.
In particular, the 6-foot-3 Acuff has been the engine behind the Arkansas offense, which ranked sixth nationally in offensive efficiency, per KenPom, as of Thursday night.
A projected lottery pick in this summer’s NBA draft, Acuff’s statistical splits — 20.2 points and 6.3 assists per game while shooting 49.7% from the field, 41.4% on 3-pointers and 78.5% from the foul line — evidence the ways in which he can dissect a defense.
Pope is well aware of this, and of the fact that Acuff scored 21 points, recorded 10 assists and had no turnovers in Arkansas’ Tuesday night comeback win at Oklahoma.
“You have those point guards that are able to spray the ball everywhere. He’s making hook passes all the way through defenders to the weak side corner, when you’re trying to tag rotation. He’s making the snap (pass) over his shoulder. He’s throwing lobs,” Pope said. “His physicality and his scoring certainly are elite, and have been for a long time. But what’s been really impressive is his ability to make plays for his teammates.”
Few defensive challenges during the 2025-26 season will stack up to this one for Pope’s group. Acuff — who has started all 21 games for the Hogs this season and is averaging more than 33 minutes per contest — is second in the SEC in assists, third in the league in minutes and fourth in the conference in scoring.
Acuff’s shooting efficiency is also remarkable: He’s a top-10 player in the SEC in each of overall shooting percentage, 3-point shooting percentage and 3-pointers made.
Acuff is also one of 16 players in Division I college basketball to have scored at least 10 points in each of their teams’ games this season. UK senior guard Otega Oweh is also among this group.
But, Pope said Thursday that it’s Acuff’s ball distribution ability that truly unlocks his offensive arsenal.
“There are very few players at the college level that can do it like he’s doing it right now. That makes things really hard,” Pope said. “It’s hard to load up on him. It’s hard to really have huge tag help. Arkansas is so long at the rim, because he’s so capable of making pinpoint passes anywhere on the floor at any time, and he’s making their offense work great.”
This puts Pope and his coaching staff in a tricky spot when it comes to game-planning for Acuff ahead of Saturday night’s matchup between the Cats and Hogs.
Sending numbers at Acuff on defense will enable him to spread the ball out to open teammates. Trying to match up one-on-one against him is likely a losing proposition because of his scoring touch.
There’s also a decision to be made whether to give Oweh the assignment of guarding Acuff or allow Oweh to defend away from Acuff in an effort to utilize his instincts when it comes to jumping passing lanes and creating turnovers that lead to transition scoring opportunities.
It’s a problem without a perfect solution.
“With a guy like Acuff, you have to have plan A, B and C. You just have to. If you give him a steady look the whole game, it gets hard,” Pope said. “... Sometimes you could almost put your weakest defender on Acuff saying that we’re always going to be two to the ball, really, really hard. Even in the open floor, go two to the ball. Sometimes you put your most dominant defender on him and say ‘Hey, we’re going to handle some stuff by ourselves.’ And then everything in between. It’ll be a mixture of all of those things.”
Despite a noncompetitive outing at Vanderbilt, Pope said there was plenty to salvage from the defensive performance in that loss. While lamenting UK’s effort in transition defense, Pope insisted there were positives on that end of the floor that could carry over to the Arkansas game and the distinctly difficult task of containing Acuff.
On this front, Pope may not be far off. According to the Torvik ratings, UK’s past two games against Ole Miss and Vanderbilt have produced its two best defensive showings of the SEC season.
“Transition was a breakdown in headspace more than it was breakdown in anything fundamental,” Pope said of Kentucky’s defensive showing in Nashville. “... If you take away the transition, and the last four minutes, we probably had a defensive game to win. We just were a disaster offensively. I think we feel confident about our ability to guard, and I think we continue to make progress there.”
