Stress wore out Hogs as SEC rivals dance on

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas came into the season with so much promise. They had the No.1 Perfect Game freshman recruiting class. They had landed the No. 6 incoming portal class according to D1Baseball. Fans even prescribed to the superstitious theory of a football title in 1964, a basketball title in 1994 and a potential baseball title in 2024.

However, as the fellow top SEC teams swept their regionals with relative ease, Arkansas became the only Top 8 seed to fail to make a regional final and is at risk of becoming the only team not to advance to the Super Regional pending the result between No. 4 UNC and LSU. Fellow SEC top 8 seeds No. 1 Tennessee, No. 2 Kentucky, No. 3 Texas A&M and No. 7 Georgia went a combined 12-0 and swept their way to the next round.

Arkansas’ style of play finally caught up to the Razorbacks, fighting and clawing for every win, going 10-4 in one-run games to get to 43-12 heading into the SEC Tournament.

“We didn’t blow anybody out,” coach Dave Van Horn said. “They didn’t blow us out. A lot of 5-4, 3-2. I mean, it was stressful. I think maybe it just beat us up a little bit mentally. By the time we got done at A&M, I was hoping that we had recovered a little bit. I thought we had.”

Unfortunately not quite, and now one of the greatest pitching seasons by a Razorback staff will feature a sad ending. The historical statistics of a pitching staff as a team, 706 strikeouts and the top ERA in the country in the regular season will enter the record books, but not have the postseason run attached to it. The burden of having 23 of the final 29 SEC games being decided by three runs or fewer, finally took its toll on the staff as 22 runs were allowed in the three games played in Fayetteville.

“We’ve got some good young guys in the program that are going to get better and gain some experience,” Van Horn said. We’ve got to get more. We’ve got to have more. So we’ll be working hard. ”

The Razorbacks will wait to see if any of the players from this years team will be back for 2025 and try to make it out of the regional for the first time in 3 years.

“Last year the draft killed us,” Van Horn said. “Absolutely killed us. We lost four freshmen last year that would’ve been freshmen on this team. They got $11 million total for all four of them. You’re just hoping to get a couple of them or just get one of them, and we didn’t get any of them. That’s our battle.”

Arkansas will find out just how many players they will need to replace after the MLB Draft, which gets underway July 14 at the Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas.

HOGS FEED:

• Arkansas fans need to put down pitchforks

• Hogs finally reached point where Smith couldn’t carry them anymore

• Razorbacks’ bats ended before season in loss to SEMO in Fayetteville Regional

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