Gonzaga’s late-October exhibition with Arkansas finally has a date, and it lands right in the middle of a brutal tune-up stretch for the Bulldogs.
According to Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports, Mark Few’s team will face John Calipari’s Razorbacks on Saturday, Oct. 24, at Bud Walton Arena. It comes nine days before Gonzaga opens the season officially against Purdue in Las Vegas on Nov. 2.
The trip to Fayetteville was first reported back in June, but now the calendar is set. Under the current college basketball rules, programs can play up to three exhibition games in a season, and this is the only reported one for Gonzaga so far.
It’s also a matchup with a little extra juice because of the coaches. Calipari was one of three Hall of Famers who spoke at Few’s induction ceremony in mid-August, joining former Gonzaga point guard John Stockton and Duke forward Grant Hill.
Few and Calipari have already met six times. Gonzaga went 0-4 against Calipari’s Memphis teams and 2-0 against his Kentucky teams, winning at the Spokane Arena in 2022-23 and then on the road at Rupp in 2023-24, Cal’s final season before Mark Pope replaced him in Lexington. This will be their first meeting since Calipari took over at Arkansas in 2024-25, though the exhibition won’t count in the standings.
The last Gonzaga-Arkansas game was a painful one for Zags fans to sit through. In the Sweet 16 of the 2022 NCAA Tournament, No.
4 Arkansas knocked off No. 1 Gonzaga, 74-68, ending one of the program’s strongest seasons and sending Chet Holmgren and Andrew Nembhard on to the NBA.
There’s also some history between the programs beyond that March meeting. Gonzaga beat Arkansas, 91-81, in the 2013 Maui Invitational, the only other matchup since Few took over in 1999.
For Gonzaga, the Arkansas game fits into a non-conference schedule that’s loaded from top to bottom. The Bulldogs have 32 total games available and 16 in the Pac-12 schedule, leaving them with a 16-game non-conference slate that already includes Purdue on Nov. 2 in Las Vegas, LSU on Nov. 14 at Spokane Arena, UCLA on Dec. 5 in Anaheim, Creighton on Dec. 12, Michigan State on Dec. 19 in Palm Springs, and Duke on Feb. 20 in Detroit.
Gonzaga will also return to the Players Era Festival for a second straight year. The Zags open there against Kansas State on Nov. 24 in Las Vegas, then play either Alabama or Baylor on Nov. 26.
Arkansas should give Gonzaga exactly the kind of early test Few wants. The Razorbacks are bringing in a talented freshman group that includes Jordan Smith Jr, JJ Andrews, and Miika Muurinen, and playing them on the road should tell the Zags plenty about where this new roster stands before the season starts for real a little more than a week later.
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