Arkansas
Arkansas baseball closes regular season with series loss to Texas A&M
It was a roller-coaster weekend for Arkansas baseball as a win that clinched the SEC West title was sandwiched between one tight and one blowout defeat against Texas A&M.
The No. 2 Razorbacks (43-12, 20-10 SEC) dropped two-of-three games against the No. 4 Aggies (44-11, 19-11) to close the regular season. Arkansas had a chance to win the series entering Saturday’s rubber match, but Texas A&M handed the Hogs their first run-rule defeat of the season, instead.
All eyes now shift toward the postseason, with Arkansas opening its SEC Tournament Wednesday night as the No. 2 seed. The Hogs will receive a first-round bye thanks to their top-four finish in the league.
Here are four observations from the Razorbacks’ series loss to Texas A&M.
Mission accomplished for Arkansas baseball
The 14-4 loss Saturday will sting, and Arkansas will be disappointed to have wasted a record-breaking start from Hagen Smith in the opener, but the only objective this weekend was to win the SEC West. The Hogs did just that with a 6-3 win Friday night.
More: Arkansas baseball clinches SEC West title with win over Texas A&M
More: Arkansas baseball bracketology: Where Hogs stand in 2024 NCAA Tournament bracket projections
“There are a lot of teams who haven’t been able to do that and we’ve done it five of the last six years,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said. “Came in second the year we didn’t do it. Just kind of let it go that last weekend a couple, three years ago, and it feels good.”
Gage Wood makes case to remain in weekend rotation
Changing the weekend rotation for the final conference series of the season — on the road against a consensus top-five team in the country — turned out to be a well-worked gamble from Van Horn.
Wood made the first SEC start of his career Friday and limited the Aggies to two earned runs across five innings. He struck out five and didn’t walk a single batter after Van Horn removed Brady Tygart and Mason Molina for losing their control in back-to-back starts building up to this weekend.
Tygart didn’t pitch against Texas A&M, but Molina did, thrusted into the Friday night fire of a 3-3 tie with a runner on first and no outs in the bottom of the seventh. Molina got out of the jam and recorded the final nine outs of the win. He could jump back into the weekend rotation as soon as the SEC Tournament.
Hudson White continues late-season surge
White won the division for Arkansas in game two, crushing a hanging slider and giving Arkansas its first lead of the weekend with a three-run homer to left in the top of the eighth. He hit another home run Saturday and finished the weekend 4-for-10 with four RBIs and three runs.
Two weeks ago, White could sense his season changing with Arkansas on the road against Kentucky. He entered that series hitting just .243, but he’s gone 14-for-32 since then with four home runs and 13 RBIs. The Texas Tech transfer is now hitting NUMBER.
“It’s been awesome,” White said Friday night. “Just been trying to stick to my plan and stick to my routine. Just trying to help the team keep stacking up wins.”
There might also be another bat getting hot at the right time. Wehiwa Aloy hit a pair of home runs this weekend to up his team-high on the season to 13.
What does Arkansas do with Will McEntire and Kendall Diggs?
It was not a fun weekend for McEntire. He faced one batter out of the bullpen Thursday night and walked in the game-winning run. He then got his first start of the season Saturday and gave up a pair of two-run homers with the Aggies striking for four runs in 1 1/3 innings.
McEntire has now given up 17 earned runs in his last 11 appearances. With a 10.60 ERA during that stretch, McEntire’s season mark has dropped from 1.75 to 4.29.
Diggs, meanwhile, went 0-for-7 at the plate and simply can’t get out of this slump that’s now stretched across two months
How much longer are the leashes for both players? There is no obvious replacement for Diggs in right field, but it’s going to be hard for Van Horn to trust McEntire in the postseason with his current form.
Michigan State basketball got off to a shaky start on Monday, using a late run to fend of Colgate in an 80-69 win. After the game, head coach Tom Izzo said his team would get “embarrassed” in their next game if they do not play better.
That next game for the 22nd-ranked Spartans is against No. 14 Arkansas. This will be the first ranked-versus-ranked non-conference game in the Breslin Center since No. 11 MSU faced No. 10 Duke on Dec. 3, 2019.
Looking at the Razorbacks, big, sweeping statements are never great to be made after Game 1, but Arkansas looked like a stronger team than last year’s during its season opener. On Monday, the Razorbacks crushed Southern, 109-77, to reach 1-0.
During the first year of the John Calipari era, Arkansas was a 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament, reached the Sweet 16, but blew a 13-point lead with less than five minutes left against Texas Tech with an Elite Eight spot at stake.
Scoring 109 points in a college basketball game is always tough. Southern is not exactly an opponent that spooks many power-conference teams, but the Jaguars are actually the top-ranked team in the SWAC on KenPom and are a couple of spots above Colgate.
Three different Razorbacks scored at least 20 points, two of whom were freshmen guards. A senior forward, Trevon Brazile, led the team with a career-high 25 points and 11 rebounds.
Both freshmen entered as five-star recruits as part of Calipari’s 5th-ranked class, according to 247Sports. Darius Acuff Jr. had a monster first half, scoring 20 of his 22 points on the day during the initial 20 minutes.
Meleek Thomas had 21 points, seven assists, and three steals during his collegiate debut.
The other Razorback with 10+ points was another freshman, Isaiah Sealy. He was a four-star recruit in Arkansas’ latest recruiting class.
Calipari’s squad nearly led this game wire-to-wire. Southern’s only lead was 2-0, and Arkansas was up by at least 10 during the final 31:31 of game time. The Razorbacks certainly played like a team that deserves, at the very least, their No. 14 ranking.
A quick thing that stands out is that Arkansas looks like a good shot-making team that also has some athleticism. Acuff made some impressive shots during his 22-point day, including a few from deep.
Brazile against MSU’s Jaxon Kohler and Carson Cooper will also be a critical matchup, as he is a lob threat every time the Razorbacks push the ball up the court. His rebounding will also be a factor.
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Boogie Fland knows he still isn’t as strong as he needs to be.
He’s getting closer, though, after packing on 13 pounds of muscle from last season, when he averaged 13.5 points and 5.1 assists for the Razorbacks but struggled against more physical SEC teams. The freshman’s slight frame took its toll alongside an undisclosed hernia injury and more public thumb injury.
On Monday night against No. 13 Arizona, Boogie Fland made his Florida basketball debut in a newly retooled Gators backcourt. The thumb issue was all gone; the strength shortcoming wasn’t. The 6’2” guard made an impressive and-one fastbreak bucket through contact in second half surge but still had trouble finishing in the teeth of a stout interior defense, at one point seeing an attempt near the paint obliterated by swarming Wildcats.
Fland finished with 4 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 steals but alongside fellow guard Xavian Lee struggled to convert from the field. Fland shot 3-of-9, Lee made 5-of-17 and if the No. 3 Gators have any hope of repeating as national champions, those two must do better.
The backcourt duo’s shooting cost them dearly on Monday against Arizona in a 6-point loss. Despite missing both three-point attempts, expect Fland to improve his outside shooting as the season goes on. Adding weight now the season’s underway will be much harder.
The 19-year-old is still about five or so pounds under his target of 190 pounds. As he described it to The Gainesville Sun’s Kevin Brockway, is the weight threshold for a “real SEC guard.”
Anthony Black Couldn’t Pass On Saying This
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Anthony Black would agree.
The 6’7” point guard played at over 200 pounds in his single spectacular season for the Razorbacks in 2022-23, racking up 12.8 points, 5.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists, and 2.1 steals per game and leading the Hogs to the Sweet 16.
Black stood out as Arkansas’ clear-cut floor general, something the program has lacked for the following two seasons.
That’s something he pointed out to Arkansas basketball fans on Monday night while watching Darius Acuff stake his claim as the best point guard the Hogs have had since Black. Acuff racked up 23 points on hyper efficient shooting but, more importantly, has in the last few weeks played in a way that spread the love and consistently made his teammates better.
Black, who now lives with down the road from Fland while playing for the Orlando Magic, took notice:
It didn’t take long for Black to delete this point guard assessment as he likely realized folks were taking it the wrong way. Black didn’t mean this as a specific slight against Fland as a Razorback last year playing alongside “TB,” or Trevon Brazile. More likely than that, Black wasn’t criticizing anybody in particular but simply pointing out the obvious: none of Arkansas’ primary ballhandlers through the last two seasons have also looked fully comfortable as a distributor.
That includes El Ellis, Devo Davis, DJ Wagner and Johnell Davis, too.
Still, none of those others entered the program with as lofty of a reputation as a “real” point guard.
As a freshman, Fland actually surpassed Black from an individual standpoint when averaging 13.5 points, 3.2 rebounds and 5.1 assists in his freshman season. But then went through a similarly frustrating episode of injury/trying-to-play-through-injury/getting indefinitely sidelined as Nick Smith Jr., Black’s backcourt mate at Arkansas.
Both Fland (thumb) and Smith (knee) both suffered persistent injuries that kept them out for many weeks at Arkansas. Both players suffered slings and arrows from some fans who felt they were sitting out to preserve their draft stock instead of putting on the line for their teams.
Both talented guards tried to come back at the end of the season, playing limited roles in big upsets of Kansas in the NCAA Tournament. But neither looked anywhere close to their normal selves.
Smith, a central Arkansas native, never publicly vented about the negativity he got while sitting out for so long. “He knows he’s not delivering,” sportscaster Mike Irwin posted. “He’s hurting. He’s an Arkansas kid and he loves that Hog as much as any of you. Give him some space and he might just find himself before this season is over.”
Fland, meanwhile, didn’t grow up as a Razorback fan. He didn’t have lifelong friends around him in Fayetteville, nor a family he could easily visit just down the interstate.
Still, Fland recalls, things started well in Fayetteville.
“When I was on the court, everybody loved me,” said on his YouTube channel. “Everybody calling and texting me saying, ‘Oh you’re gone [to the NBA draft] this year,’ ‘Keep going’ and this and that.”
Temperature Plummets around Arkansas Basketball
Then, in January, things turned cold.
“As soon as I got hurt and wasn’t able to do what I do in the court, nobody checked in. Nobody texted me like ‘You good? How’s your hand?’”
A bit later, he added: “I didn’t get that same love and support that I got when I was on the court than when I was off the court. I feel like that was one of the toughest lessons for me, because it just goes to show the love wasn’t real.”
Here’s where Fland, frankly, probably would have felt more supported attending St. John’s closer to his home. In that scenario, even if he’d suffered the same injury, he’d have been surrounded by friends and family.
As it was, he felt somewhat betrayed by certain Arkansas basketball fans and hangers on who only wanted to be around in the good times.
Just like with Nick Smith Jr., though, all of that is behind him now.
Smith, despite that single, rough season in college and getting cut by the NBA team which drafted him, is now bouncing back in a big way. He racked up 25 points to play the hero in the Los Angeles Lakers’ Monday night win vs Portland.
Fland, too, may be on the cusp of a turnaround coming out of Florida’s loss to Arizona.
“God has a time for me,” he said on his channel. “He has a different journey for me.”
“I just learned to embrace it and try to understand where He’s coming from and try to look at the different picture, try to look at things in a different way instead of in a negative way.”
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Boogie Fland talks about the fake love at 13:30 below:
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More coverage of Arkansas basketball and Boogie Fland from BoAS…
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