Arkansas expects to change recent postseason course beginning on Friday

FAYETTEVILLE –  Arkansas l heads to its eighth straight postseason run and Razorback baseball head coach Dave Van Horn was strictly business at this press conference after practice Thursday afternoon.

The last two seasons’ finishes have been less than to be desired, and the Head Hog has been just as frustrated as fans have, just not as boisterous as some. 

Snake bit, bad luck, just ran into the wrong team at the right time. Do Razorback fans even know what good fortune is or what it feels like? Those sentiments usually precede the torment Razorback fans felt after being knocked out of postseason play.

Pick the sport, and you will find fans who are angered, not for the performance, for the most part, but for the players because they see how hard they fight on the field of play. Fans feel that their emotional investment is equal to the players’, so when they grieve and attach their anguish to that team connection, the feeling is raw and hard to navigate.

Coaches are the next target in the practice range of barb tossing. Arkansas hitting coach Nate Thompson appeared to be the target after the ’24 season, and there was some reason for concern. The team batting average was the second lowest, .271, that it had been in eight years.

Van Horn thought a simple fix, shifting Thompson to the dugout, could be the right move, rather than blowing the whole thing up like folks were calling for at season’s end. 

“Always. If you’re not learning, you’re going the other way. You gotta learn from your mistakes. You gotta learn from experience,” Van Horn said Thursday. “And there’s nothing more –– I don’t think you can learn any more without the experiences the way you get it.”

Fast forward to the present day, and the nay-sayers haven’t a leg to stand on. To date, in ’25, the batting average is up 42 points, the on-base percentage is up 41 points, and the team has scored 33 more runs.

Additionally, seven batters are hitting over .300, resulting in 92 more runs. You can’t help but give credit to a guy who got verbally kicked in the teeth by fans, calling for his job, and some went to the extent of calling for DVH to step aside because his approach might be too old school. 

Now that we have addressed the elephant in the room, there are some unexplained things that happen repeatedly, which fans will point to as the cause of the Razorbacks’ postseason misfortune to recur.

Richardson Court was the most recent that was supposed to help lead the basketball team back to the promised land of Championships. Nothing like that exists in softball, baseball, or football, so what is it?

One glaring point and misfortune is that these teams seem to run into a team that is hot at the right time. The offense disappears, or a couple of bad plays on defense that didn’t happen in the regular season stings you on the scoreboard. Or, the workhorse that carried the team all season had one bad inning, and it all seemed to unravel at the wrong time, and it ended faster than it started. Free passes are the fastest way to let a lesser opponent in the game and get you beat. 

“As far as what’s gone down the last couple of years is, you know, last year we walked people. We got in trouble game one. You get a big lead, you’re up 8-1, and you’re in the fifth inning. So yes, you can probably figure, I still remember it,” Van Horn said. “Then your pitcher goes out and walks like the bases loaded, and we just punched in five runs. Next thing you know, it’s 8-8, and we’re using our better bullpen arms on Friday, which is okay if the game’s tight, but we should have blown that game out.”

Could it all be easily dashed away like a scene from Ted Lasso trying to banish away the spirits? The entire team meets in center field and brings a prized possession, tosses it into a burn barrel under the Fayetteville night sky, and exercises any demons that might be hanging around or hires a priest to cleanse Baum-Walker with Holy Water and bless it. Baseball players are creatures of two things: habit and superstition.

There will come a point in the regionals, the Supers, or at Omaha where the pitching will be all out of sync, or the batting order will go colder than an order of Oysters Rockefeller. Having Thompson walk the players through the scouting report again could be a subtle but effective difference. This team has gone through rough patches at the plate, just like every other team this year, and there is no clear, cut leader heading into the postseason; this field is as wide open as it has been in 10-plus years. 

If Arkansas can get into any of the teams, bullpen early is something I will be watching for in game one and beyond. The errors in Hoover were an outlier for the defense, and playing at Baum-Walker will be a boost this team, and any team, needs and will take at this time of year. 

Three wins here, two wins there, another three wins over there, and two wins to cap it off is the roadmap to a National Championship, totaling 10 wins for the whole thing. Arkansas put together a 12-game win streak earlier this season, and that’s why the wise guys are considering the Hogs a small favorite in this year’s MCWS, which doesn’t sport a clear, cut team with an X on their back.

Yes, Vanderbilt is the number one overall seed, which was predicated on them finishing in the top four in the regular season and winning the conference tournament last weekend. 

Arkansas veteran pitcher Will McEntire is rasdy to shake off the last two years with a fresh perspective.

“Yeah definitely,” McEntire said. “This team feels really complete in every aspect of the game. We’ve played a bunch of tough games, especially toward the end of the stretch so I feel like we’re a battle-hardened team and we’re ready to get after it. ”

A couple of stats for folks in the stands and at home to keep an eye out for. The Hogs are 4-5 in one-run games but are  4-1 in two-run games. If the dam breaks and they score seven runs or more, they are 32-2 and pretty much a winner, winner, chicken dinner. 

Arkansas is 2-10 if trailing after six innings but 38-2 if leading after six innings. The point is that if Arkansas has a two-run lead after six innings, it is all but automatic. However, if they’re trailing after six, then the chances of them making a comeback aren’t good. Plain and simple, they have to score first, and this team is not built to play from behind. 

Van Horn put it rather simple at his Thursday press conference.

“Well, you know, it’s really just been the last couple of years” Van Horn said. ” Bottom line, I mean, it’s a fact. This team’s a lot better than last year’s team or the year before. We’re better.”

Photo by John D. James