{"id":543226,"date":"2026-03-16T03:20:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T03:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/543226\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T03:20:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T03:20:23","slug":"arkansas-tops-vanderbilt-to-win-first-sec-tournament-since-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/543226\/","title":{"rendered":"Arkansas tops Vanderbilt to win first SEC tournament since 2000"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — John Calipari told his 17th-ranked Arkansas Razorbacks<\/a> to use the SEC tournament title game to measure where they are before the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n

Nick Pringle<\/a> disagreed, saying a league championship was on the line Sunday.<\/p>\n

“And I said, ‘If that’s what you need me to say, great, let’s go get this championship!” Calipari said.<\/p>\n

Darius Acuff Jr<\/a>. scored 30 points and handed out 11 assists, leading Arkansas past Vanderbilt<\/a> 86-75 for its first SEC tournament crown since 2000.<\/p>\n

“We just happened to play a little bit better the last four minutes,” Calipari said.<\/p>\n

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With the win, Calipari became the first coach in SEC history to win tournament titles at two different programs.<\/p>\n

He won six with Kentucky Wildcats<\/a> with the last in 2018, including the 2017 title over Arkansas. Calipari now has 16 combined conference tournament titles in his career with stints at UMass<\/a> in the A-10 and Memphis<\/a> in Conference USA.<\/p>\n

This title game featured a duel of All-SEC guards in Vanderbilt’s Tyler Tanner<\/a> defending Acuff, the SEC player and freshman of the year. Acuff put on a show by finding teammates with passes, dropping fadeaway jumpers and 3s or layups.<\/p>\n

The Razorbacks (26-8) sealed the win with a 12-0 spurt in the final minutes. That helped Arkansas snap a skid of four straight losses in this game with its second-ever win in the SEC title game.<\/p>\n

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Arkansas takes a five-game winning streak into the NCAA tournament after clinching an automatic spot with the victory.<\/p>\n

“We not done yet,” Acuff said.<\/p>\n

Billy Richmond III<\/a> added 18 points for Arkansas. Trevon Brazile<\/a> had 16 and D.J. Wagner<\/a> 11.<\/p>\n

No. 22 Vanderbilt (26-8) was looking for its first title in this tournament since 2012 when the Commodores beat Calipari and Kentucky. They now are 2-1 when reaching this championship game.<\/p>\n

“We’re dejected,” Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington said. “We wanted this. We put everything into it. We’ll get back up and we’re excited about the NCAA tournament coming up next week.”<\/p>\n

Duke Miles<\/a> and Tyler Nickel<\/a> each had 19 for Vanderbilt, and Tanner finished with 15.<\/p>\n

The Razorbacks routed Vanderbilt by 25 on Jan. 20 at Bud Walton Arena. This time, the Commodores were coming off their first win over an AP top-five team since 2012 with their largest margin of victory over such a foe in program history after routing No. 4 Florida<\/a> in the semifinals.<\/p>\n

With the title on the line, Arkansas led 41-39 at halftime.<\/p>\n

AK Okereke’s 3 with 17:57 to go put the Commodores ahead 46-45, and they strung together a 9-4 spurt for their biggest lead yet at 55-49. Then they went cold missing 12 of 13 shots. Nickel’s 3 for Vanderbilt with 6:40 left tied it at 66.<\/p>\n

Then the Razorbacks took control and finished shooting 62.5% from 3-point range (15 of 24).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE, Tenn. — John Calipari told his 17th-ranked Arkansas Razorbacks to use the SEC tournament title game to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-543226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}