Consensus Top 5 ranked Diamond Hogs earn SEC Tournament rest until Friday

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

FAYETTEVILLE – After a regular season that produced 43 overall wins and a 20-10 league mark, the consensus top 5 nationally ranked Arkansas baseball team will take the No. 2 seed into this week’s SEC Tournament.

The event with a new 16-team, single-elimination format will begin Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. with four opening-round games at the Hoover Met in Hoover, Ala.

The Razorbacks (43-12), one of four teams with a double bye, won’t get into action until Friday at 3 p.m.

Arkansas will face the winner of Wednesday’s 4:30 game between seventh-seeded Ole Miss and either 10th-seeded Florida or 15th-seeded South Carolina, who battle Tuesday at 4:30.

Arkansas catcher Ryder Helfrick, who had a grand slam in Saturday’s win over Tennessee, is looking forward the new SEC Tournament format.

“I mean, for me, last year we went 0-2, so we didn’t play more than three anyways,” Helfrick said. “But, I think this year we need to just go in and play hard and try to win the whole thing.

“I think that’s always the goal, is to win, and if we had to play seven – I would want to play seven.”

Arkansas needs three wins to take home the title.

Yeah it’s going to be different not having a double-elimination right away,” pitcher Will McEntire said. “So, go out there with a sense of urgency and just play tough baseball.”

Clinching a double bye after winning two of three against visiting Tennessee this weekend was big per Razorback head coach Dave Van Horn.

“It’s real important,” Van Horn said. “You could look at all the scenarios of every team because they’re all bunched up and if we would have lost again…(Friday) and we get beat…(Saturday) then we’re a part of the bunch.

“Now with this win… you can start planning a little bit. So this game was real important.”

Arkansas was ranked No. 4 by the USA Today Coaches and Baseball America polls on Monday while D1 Baseball and Perfect Game both have the Razorbacks fifth.

NCAA Baseball Tournament projections have Arkansas landing a Top 8 national seed, which would allow it to host both a Regional and Supreme Court Regional if the Razorbacks advance.

Van Horn believes his team has secured one of those eight national berths.

“Yeah,” Van Horn said. “Twenty wins in our league. That’s probably the main thing.”

Arkansas is 32-4 this season at Baum-Walker Stadium and leads the nation in home wins.

The Razorbacks have won 20 SEC games in each of their last three seasons, five of the last six and have done so six times in program history with five of them under Van Horn.

McEntire summed up the season and his career after roaring through 11 Tennessee batters in the series-clinching game on Saturday.

“It’s just embracing adversity,” McEntire said. “You’re going to hit tough times, you’re going to lose series, but you can’t lose sight of the fact that you got more in front of you. So, lose a series, move on. Sweep a series, move on. Never stay in the past, you always got to look to the future.”

Photo by John D. James