No. 12 Arkansas vs. No. 9 Virginia: Razorbacks Face First Real Test
MEN'S BASKETBALL · NOVEMBER 6, 2026
No. 12 Arkansas Basketball Is the Exhale This Football Season Never Gave Us
Bud Walton already sounds like November. After a bruising football fall, Razorback fans have a ranked team, a Hall of Fame coach, and a Sunday on ESPN worth circling.
The Hog Call staff · Fayetteville
Jeremiah Wilkinson finishes at the rim in Arkansas’s 106-61 opening win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Nov. 3, 2026, at Bud Walton Arena.
We have spent two months learning new ways to lose a Saturday. Football is 3-5 and 1-4 in the SEC, and the 10-34 home loss to Missouri on Oct. 31 still sits in the throat. The offense is averaging 19.6 points. Ryan Silverfield is in year one, Auburn is up Saturday, and Texas and LSU are still on the card. Nobody here is pretending the rest of this football November will feel kind.
So we are looking at basketball the way you look at the first warm week after a hard winter. It is already in full swing, and it showed up loud.
Tuesday night at Bud Walton Arena, No. 12 Arkansas opened John Calipari’s third season by running Arkansas-Pine Bluff off the floor, 106-61. A 25-0 run, a program-record 45 fast-break points, and a 54th straight home opener. Twelve players scored. Freshmen accounted for 65 of those 106 points. After Missouri walked out of Fayetteville with a 24-point win, that box score felt like a window opening in a stale room.
We are lucky to have the coach on that sideline, and it is worth saying while football is still hunting an identity. Calipari is a Hall of Famer in his third season on the Hill. Through two years he was 50-23, with a Sweet 16 each March and a 29-5 mark inside Bud Walton. Tuesday made him 51-23 and 30-5 at home. When his teams score 100, he is 52-1. He recruits the freshmen other coaches only scout, then coaches them like the building is full. It is full. Programs wander for years looking for someone who raises the floor and the ceiling at once. We already have him. Football keeps asking for patience. Calipari has a better question for No. 9 Virginia on Sunday.
That question airs at noon Central on ESPN, from Capital One Arena in Washington. Indiana at the Garden, Michigan State, North Carolina, and Arizona are still ahead. Sunday is the first time this roster has to prove the opener was a habit, not a hello. Two Razorbacks already look like the spine. Two Cavaliers explain why the measuring stick is real.
Two standouts, each sideline
ARKANSAS
Jeremiah Wilkinson
Jr. · Guard · No. 5 · Georgia transfer
The junior guard in No. 5, in from Georgia, is the adult in a very young room. He led all scorers with 23 points on 7-of-11 shooting, four threes, six rebounds, three assists, and five steals. Nine of those points, all from deep, came inside the 25-0 run. A year ago he averaged 17.4 and finished ninth in the SEC in scoring. If Washington turns grim, he is the Hog who has already done this against real defenses.
ARKANSAS
Jordan Smith Jr.
Fr. · Guard · consensus top-five recruit
The freshman played like he had memorized his own scouting report. Twenty points on 7-of-11, four rebounds, three steals, 11 of them after halftime. Since 1977-78, only eight Razorbacks have opened with at least 20 points and four rebounds. Smith is the third freshman on that list, beside Meleek Thomas and Patrick Beverley. He started with Wilkinson, Billy Richmond III, Miikka Muurinen, and Cooper Bowser. Pine Bluff will not prepare him for Virginia’s length. Sunday will.
VIRGINIA
Thijs De Ridder
Forward · 6-9 · first-team All-ACC
Virginia’s 6-foot-9 forward was first-team All-ACC a year ago at 15.6 points a game, then opened this November with 24 points and nine rebounds. He is on the preseason Karl Malone Award watch list because he can score on the block and still drag a help defender to the elbow. Our length has to know where he is, or the noon tip gets away in a hurry.
VIRGINIA
Sam Lewis
Wing · 6-7 · 10.6 ppg a year ago
The 6-foot-7 wing averaged 10.6 points last season and scored 20 in Virginia’s opener, with four rebounds and three assists. He is the second scorer who keeps De Ridder from being the whole menu, and he gives Ryan Odom a perimeter piece who has already lived an ACC winter. Seven-footer Johann Grünloh will be on the glass behind them. This is a ranked November neutral-site game, the kind of night a Calipari roster is built to play.
Call the Hogs. Football can have the rest of this hard month. Basketball already has the building, the coach, and a Sunday worth circling.
Scores and lines from the Nov. 3, 2026 opener at Bud Walton Arena, Arkansas athletics, and early-season reports on Virginia. Football record through Nov. 5, 2026.