Salute to 2025 Arkansas basketball team as final Razorbackers of the Week

Injuries and adversity may have limited the 2024/2025 Arkansas Razorback basketball team throughout the season, but it didn't prevent them from hitting the mark in John Calipari's first season as head coach. In the end, Arkansas' nine-man rotation led by seniors Johnell Davis, Jonas Aidoo and Trevon Brazile along with underclassmen Adou Thiero, Zvonimir Ivisic, D.J. Wagner, Boogie Fland, Karter Knox and Billy Richmond III all did their part to help Arkansas make a fourth Sweet 16 appearance in the last five years of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

For that, they collectively earned our final Razorbacker of the Week honors for basketball.

Razorbacker of the Week: The entire team

The season ended on Thursday with a 85-83 overtime loss to the Texas Tech Red Raiders, who came into the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 9 in the country. Arkansas, which finished with a record of 22-14 on the season, narrowly missed an opportunity to advance to the Elite Eight round by losing a 13-point lead with under five minutes to play in regulation then falling by a single basket in overtime.

"Two teams went at it. (It was a) slugfest," Calipari said afterwards. "We're all disappointed here, but I told them there's nothing them individually or my team could do to disappoint me because of what they've done this year."

What the Razorbacks did was fight out of an 0-5 start to conference play in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and earn an at large bid as a No. 10 seed in the Tournament's Western Regional. The team finished the regular season at 19-12 by winning eight of it's final 13 SEC games. They then went 3-2 in the postseason with a win over South Carolina in the SEC Tournament before upsetting No. 7 seeded Kansas and No. 2 seeded St. John's in the NCAA Tournament to set up the game against Texas Tech.

Despite missing significant playing time as the rest of the team fought their way into the post season, Thiero (15 points) and Fland (13 points) still finished as the team's leading scorers on the season. Both players fought back from those injuries to play in the NCAA Tournament.

Davis and Wagner were the only other Razorbacks to finish the season as double figure scorers with 12 and 11 point respective averages. Both players remained consistent in the NCAA Tournament with double digit scoring averages and Davis closed out his college career with a 30 point effort in the final loss to Texas Tech.

Thiero also finished as the team's leading rebounder on the season with a 5.8 average. However it was players like Brazile (5.2), Aidoo (4.9) and Ivisic (4.3) who each stepped up down the stretch to record double digits scoring and rebounding in multiple games to help the team make the postseason.

The same could be said for freshmen Knox and Richmond who also showed flashes with heroic efforts down the stretch and in the post season.

"They wrote their own story," Calipari said. "They didn't let somebody else write it. They wrote it. "We started so bad, but we were beat up and injured and we just we didn't talk about it. We just said, let's keep playing. Let's go. Next man up.

"And you think about what TB did with the minutes he got. Jonas coming back from injury and now all of a sudden doing what he did,. What Billy Richmond did with his minutes? What Karter Knox did with more minutes? (It was) the next man up. They took advantage of it."

Calipari — who has won a national title, played multiple national championship games and led three different programs to the Final Fours over the course of his Hall-of-Fame career — has let it be known that this year's team provided him with what he calls his most rewarding season ever.

"They were all in a dark place individually and they overcame it. I just kept saying. The first battle you have is the one with yourself. Don't worry about battling anybody else. Battle yourself. How do you keep a good attitude? How do you understand there's only one way to do this is (and that's) work your way through it.

"Second thing is if you're so worried about yourself, you can't play for us. The game's really hard, and they became one heartbeat. Then, the game became easier for each of them. And each of them did some good stuff. Every one of them, played better, grew as a player, grew as a person."