Arkansas Flag and Banner, the Little Rock distributor, retailer and manufacturer of flags and other products, has announced a new initiative to downsize its retail presence at its historic Ninth Street…
Vanderbilt baseball made a big deal in the offseason of saying that the performance it put on the field in 2024 wasn’t good enough. The Commodores fired hitting coach Mike Baxter and assistant Tyler Shewmaker and brought in Jayson King as hitting coach and Ty Blankmeyer as recruiting coordinator.
After all that, though, it feels Vanderbilt is back to square one offensively after getting swept at home by Arkansas by scores of 9-0 on Friday, 6-4 in 10 innings on Saturday and 7-3 on Sunday. The Razorbacks (26-3, 8-1 SEC) displayed the modern offense of an SEC title contender, hitting eight home runs across the three games. The Commodores (20-8, 4-5) couldn’t come close to keeping up.
For most of the weekend, Vanderbilt’s pitching kept up. After the blowout Friday night, Vanderbilt managed to push Saturday’s game to extra innings before losing in the 10th and held a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning of Sunday’s game before giving up five runs in that inning.
Here’s what we learned:
In Texas A&M and Arkansas, Vanderbilt faced two of the SEC’s top pitching staffs on back-to-back weekends. The Commodores swept the Aggies while scoring 16 runs on the weekend, with seven extra-base hits. Against the Razorbacks, Vanderbilt scored seven runs and had five extra-base hits.
But Texas A&M has been the SEC’s worst offense statistically, while Arkansas has been one of the best. The Razorbacks tallied 13 extra-base hits and eight home runs and scored 11 of their 22 runs in the series via the home run. The Commodores hit just one home run, a three-run shot by Colin Barczi in Sunday’s game.
“We didn’t, they did,” Corbin said Sunday when asked why Vanderbilt hasn’t managed to get the same level of power production as other SEC teams.
Cam Kozeal spent his freshman season at Vanderbilt in 2024, when he started for most of the year at second base and DH. But he transferred to Arkansas in the offseason and is now a first baseman.
Kozeal had the best performance of any of the Razorbacks’ hitters across the weekend, putting up five hits and eight RBIs, including two home runs off JD Thompson in Friday’s game and one Saturday.
“Good two-strike hitting, and he sat on a couple of fastballs that weren’t located well, and he hit them hard,” Corbin said Friday of Kozeal’s performance.
Thompson got touched up Friday night, giving up five runs in six innings (four on home runs). After him, relievers Brennan Seiber, Hudson Barton and Ryan Ginther combined to give up four runs over the next three innings with seven walks.
The pitching was much better for the rest of the weekend. On Saturday, Cody Bowker gave up two runs in five innings and Sawyer Hawks followed him with one run in four innings. Miller Green took a tough-luck loss in the 10th inning as three defensive miscues − one officially scored an error and two on squeeze bunts that didn’t record an out − led to three runs for Arkansas.
“Those were two good efforts (by Bowker and Hawks),” Corbin said Saturday. “I thought Bowker did a nice job after the home run Kozeal had. He did a good job of just coming back and kind of minimizing damage. Was a real good effort by both of them. So from a pitching standpoint, we deserve to win today.”
On Sunday, Connor Fennell gave up two runs in five innings, walking just one and striking out 10. Following him was Alex Kranzler, who held Arkansas scoreless for two innings but was charged with three runs in his third inning to take the loss. Ethan McElvain, who came in after Kranzler to try to escape the inning, allowed two runs in ⅓ of an inning.
“It was good baseball,” Corbin said Sunday. “It was hard-fought baseball. Certainly on their end, there’s really good pitching to the one inning that kind of blew us up. It was one inning yesterday, too. They were good baseball games up to a certain point, and lost it late yesterday. More the same today, different set of circumstances, but results the same.”
Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X, formerly Twitter, @aria_gerson.
Arkansas Flag and Banner, the Little Rock distributor, retailer and manufacturer of flags and other products, has announced a new initiative to downsize its retail presence at its historic Ninth Street…
Because too many deer in Arkansas can be harmful to the environment and even to the deer herd itself, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, partnered with other organizations, are having their annual urban archery deer hunt this fall in a select number of communities.
Arkansas Game and Fish partnered with Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry, Arkansas Bow Hunters Association, the Bull Shoals Bow Hunters Association, the Hot Springs Village POA and each participating city, said Ralph Meeker, deer program coordinator for Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
The nine cities that are participating are Cherokee Village, Fairfield Bay, Heber Springs, Helena-West Helena, Horseshoe Bend, Russellville, Bull Shoals, Lakeview and Hot Springs Village.
“Our goal is deer number reduction,” Meeker said. “There are no bag limits and there are no antler point restrictions on the deer that they harvest within the cities that participate.”
Deer grow very rapidly in urban settings, Meeker said.
“(Urban deer hunting is) not just to reduce human conflicts with deer but it’s also for the benefit of the herd condition and to make sure their populations are still balanced with the habitat they’re utilizing,” he said.
Deer can cause vehicle collisions and depredation of crops and landscape, according to Meeker. Deer can also over-browse native vegetation which can have a cascading effect for other wildlife species that inhabit those areas, Meeker said.
“Deer are also a vector for ticks,” Meeker said. “The more deer you have in an area, the more ticks can be moved around which can be an issue not just for the deer but for humans and pets.”
There’s concern about possible disease risks from deer to deer.
“When you have high deer densities, if any type of disease or outbreak occurs, we worry about the spread of that disease,” Meeker said.
In an overpopulated situation, there are worries about the health of the deer herd itself, Meeker said.
“There’s only a certain amount of food able to go around for the deer that are present and so we do want to make sure that the deer populations are balanced with the habitat,” he said.
Since the urban deer hunt started 24 years ago, “the deer hit accidents are down and there is a healthier herd because of the simple fact that we’re maintaining management numbers,” said Dwayne Spangler, urban hunt director of Arkansas Crossbow Association.
Fairfield Bay mayor, Seth Connell said there’s a lot of deer in Fairfield Bay.
“I almost had one jump in front of the road in front of me just the other day; you see them everywhere,” said Connell.
“One of the great things about deer hunting is that it solves a lot of problems,” Connell said. “If you have too many, it becomes a safety issue. If you don’t have enough, it becomes a wildlife issue.”
Fairfield Bay volunteer deer coordinator, Mark Harbour said about 12 years ago they noticed a deer problem.
“They were skinny, their ribs were showing and (we) had a few automobile accidents,” Harbour said. “A lot of the residents couldn’t plant any flowers or landscape because the deer would just eat everything up that they planted.”
The city council couldn’t decide about having a deer hunt so they opted to have a vote of the general population, Harbour said. The population voted in favor of the urban deer hunt about 3 to 1, Harbour said.
“The deer look much healthier and the deer act more like deer,” Harbour said. “Instead of laying around on people’s porches acting like pets, they act more like wild animals.”
The urban archery deer hunting season is accepting registration for permits until Tuesday to bow-hunt deer.
The number of permits are unlimited.
“We typically have between 700 and 1,000 urban bow-hunters participate each year,” Meeker said. “We typically have between 700 and 1,000 deer harvested each year by those hunters.”
The urban deer hunting season begins Sept. 1 and ends the last day in February, Meeker said. The cities are allowed to shorten those days within the allotted framework, he said.
“It’s not necessarily the best method but I would say it’s a more safer method for urban situations,” Meeker said. “Modern guns are likely the most effective method but there are safety issues concerning using guns inside human populated areas, so archery is likely the most safe just because of the distance that you have to be to that animal.”
The safety track record is excellent, said Meeker. “Because of the steps that we require these hunters to go through, we’ve had zero accidents concerning the public. Safety for the public, safety for the hunter, that’s our No. 1 goal. Our No. 2 goal is to remove deer,” he said.
The regulations for urban deer hunting are a bit different than regular deer season.
The urban deer hunters have to take the International Crossbow Education Program class and go to the city specific orientation and shoot their bow proficient, Spangler said. They also need their Arkansas Game and Fish hunting license, he said.
In order to hunt on private land, hunters must have written permission, Meeker said.
“Just because they qualify to participate in the hunt, that doesn’t necessarily mean they can hunt wherever they want,” he said.
The deer still have to be checked, and each hunter’s first adult deer that is harvested has to be donated to Arkansas Hunters Feed the Hungry, Meeker said.
“In each one of the cities, we have a refrigerated trailer so all they have to do is field dress the deer, take it over and drop it in,” Spangler said.
According to Meeker, there’s 350 to 500 deer donated to Arkansas Hunters Feed the Hungry which equates anywhere from 9,000 to 15,000 pounds of processed meat.
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