No. 3 national seed Diamond Hogs learn pathway to possible College World Series trip

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

FAYETTEVILLE – For the seventh time in the last eight years, Arkansas will be hosting an NCAA Baseball Tournament Regional and there will be some new faces in the mix.

The top-seeded Razorbacks (43-13) — the No. 3 national seed – will face fourth seed North Dakota State (20-31) Friday at 2 p.m. in the Fayetteville Regional four-team event’s opening game that will be on ESPN +.

That game will be followed by a clash between second-seed Kansas (43-15) third-seed Creighton (41-14) at 7 p.m.

The losers of those two games will play Saturday at 2 p.m. and winners at 8 p.m. that night.

Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn was prepared for those teams with Ohio Valley Conference champ Little Rock – who was shipped to LSU – also a possibility.

“That’s pretty much who I thought was coming,” Van Horn said. “Obviously Nebraska winning yesterday, there was a possibility of them coming in as a 3. I did feel like KU would come in being three hours up the road as a 2. They’ve had a great season.

“You know I felt like it was going to be either North Dakota State or Little Rock coming in as the 4. So pretty much what I thought.”

The Fayetteville Regional is paired with the Knoxville Regional, which has host and No. 14 national seed Tennessee, No. 4 seed Miami (OH), No. 2 seed Wake Forest and No. 3-seed Cincinnati.

Van Horn was not surprised another SEC team would be a possible threat in a Super Regional to keep Arkansa from making it to the College World Series.

Vanderbilt, Texas, Arkansas and Auburn were the top four national sees, the SEC had six of the top eight, will host 8 of the 16 Regionals and 13 of the league’s 16 teams are in the 64-team field.

‘No, not at all,” Van Horn said. “There’s a lot of SEC teams in there and we figured we’d probably be matched up with one of them.”

North Dakota State beat Oral Roberts University 4-2 to win Summit League Tournament title on Saturday after losing 3-1 earlier in the day.

The Bison are 1-4 all-time in NCAA Tournament action with their last trip coming in 2021, but have won four of their last five games.

It to their first NCAA Tournament berth under head coach Tyler Oakes.

“We have been an underdog all year,” Oakes said. “It is something that we thrive in.

“We know that when people think about North Dakota State, they don’t think about baseball and that’s fine with us showing people that we have talented guys and can play with anyone.

“That’s part of why we scheduled the way we did in non-conference – just to set ourselves for opportunities like this.

“Anything is possible once you get in. You just have to keep playing like we did this past week and anything can happen.

“I am excited we get this opportunity against really good teams. We have got to go there with confidence. We can’t back down them obviously.”

Van Horn expects an experienced foe that will compete.

“They have an older team,” Van Horn said. “I was informed that they have… like 10 seniors on their team. A lot of times that’s what it takes when you’re a mid major to be really successful at all levels is to have those older kids.

“They won the tournament up there. Beat Oral Roberts and obviously Oral Roberts has had a pretty good run over the years of going to regionals. So I’m sure they’re going to be a solid team.

“They’ve been sneaky good over the last few years to be honest with you,” Van Horn said. “They’ve taken some trips early out West and beaten some good people.”

North Dakota started the season 0-13 after traveling to play Dallas Baptist, Lamar, Texas-Rio Grande, Valley, Alabama, LSU and Tulane.

The Bisons’ season-opening skid ended with a 12-3 at Tulane and they also traveled to face Oklahoma State, Minnesota Omaha and Creighton, where it lost 5-2.

North Dakota State pitcher Nolan Johnson doesn’t expect his team to back down.

“They are favored on paper of course, but it takes just one big game,” Johnson said. “We play a tough non-conference schedule so it’s not we aren’t used to it. We’ve played at LSU, Alabamas and Texas before so we have been on the big stage before.”

Kansas is making its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament since 2019 after going 20-10 in Big 12 action.

The Jayhawks are doing so after a rebuilding effort led by Dan Fitzgerald, the Big 12 Coach of the Year.

Kansas is the only team with 43 overall wins, 20 conference wins and 20 true road wins.

The Jayhawks are also tied for the second most wins of any power conference team in the nation and finished with more overall wins than any team in the Big 12.

The 20 road wins also established a new school record.
 
“Incredibly proud,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s exactly what we came here to do and more. Coming into this year we knew that we were a regional team. It was just about going out and executing.

“If you think about how we did execute, it was pretty fantastic. We won the games we were supposed to win and the times that we stubbed our toe, you can count them. This is incredibly fulfilling.”
Kansas and Creighton have met 43 times with the Blue Jays hosting a 25-18 lead in the series.

But the Jayhawks have won the last six meetings between the pair.

Van Horn is familiar with Fitzgerald, who also coached at Dallas Baptist University.

“When he was at DBU, out on the road a little bit,” Van Horn said. “But mostly our assistants know him. Nate Thompson knows him real well and yeah, he’s done a great job, he’s a great coach there, he’s done a tremendous job at KU.

“When he got that job, he went in there and just really elevated the program. And he did it by, probably, the way he runs the program, but at the same time he elevated the talent level and they’ve had a great year. 20 wins in the Big 12 plus a couple wins in the tournament, so they’re going to be good.

Creighton went 17-4 while winning the Big East.

“The team you can’t look past is Creighton,” Van Horn said. “They got in over a couple of teams that were projected to possibly get in because they beat them straight up.

“They’ve always played great defense, they’ve always pitched well and they don’t beat themselves. It’s their head coach’s last year, he’s retiring this year, and I’m sure they’re going to play extremely hard.” 

Photo by John D. James