Pearls About Swine: Hog Regional postmortem

The longer Dave Van Horn goes without a title — and this 2023 team just made it 21 years for the iconic coach without one — the more we’ll hear whispers of curses and hexes and such.

Arkansas is indisputably a college baseball power now. Long a good-to-great program, it's transitioned into a full-blown machine that churns out SEC titles, 40-plus wins in the regular season, and Top 10 rankings with regularity. And even when Van Horn's had an inconsistent squad, things have sometimes panned out better than expected. (Relevant examples: the 2009 College World Series semifinalist ended up below .500 in SEC play, and the 2022 Omaha group conquered the Stillwater Regional and the Chapel Hill Super from the second seed.)

With all these trips to Nebraska in June, you’d think something would go right there. Van Horn's won an abundance of games at TD Ameritrade Park (now Charles Schwab Field Omaha), and he's gotten three national semifinalists and a runner-up out of the last eight squads to reach the heartland.

Yet, the 2023 season ended in Fayetteville ahead of what most folks had scheduled. Again, Arkansas seemed to be penalized for its ass-kickery during the standard campaign: Winning 20 league games and a co-championship with Florida earned the Hogs tough visitors from Fort Worth, Tucson and Santa Clara.

Those Horned Frogs from Texas arrived salty and fairly confident. Why wouldn't they be? In the season-opening mixer down in Texas, TCU smoked Arkansas, 18-5. Then they muddled their way through the Big 12, but got clicking again at the absolute worst time for the Hogs, winning their league tourney and building momentum.

Nothing went right, to be honest, in any of the four games. Arkansas dispatched Santa Clara in the opener after trailing 2-0, ultimately routing the upstart Broncos, 13-6. But it was a Peyton Holt rib injury during (of course) the anticlimactic final innings that soured things.

Then, any hopes of taking those hot bats, minus Holt, into a Saturday showdown with TCU got derailed by rain. The Broncos and Wildcats finished their eliminator well into Saturday night, and Arkansas had to wait till 2 p.m. on Sunday to carry over momentum from 40 hours or so earlier.

I’m not making excuses here, but pointing out that Arkansas once again has an extraordinarily rotten run of luck when the postseason arrives. While the Hog pitchers could do nothing to ward off TCU's furious offense in two more lopsided losses, they also had a skeleton crew working by the end of the Regional. And I don't mean that to disrespect a talented but small remaining staff; the problem is that injuries to key arms before and throughout the season diminished the staff's effectiveness greatly.

Of course, the Hog offense largely and often made up for that with some pretty potent hitting. So what happened along the way? Three gifted hitters (Jared Wegner, Tavian Josenberger, and Peyton Stovall) all ended up with injuries that gobbled up several games of the season, with Stovall's being a season-ender that paved the way for Holt's late-season heroics.

Parker Rowland and John Bolton proved solid defensively, but limited enough offensively that Arkansas's lineup was just too inconsistent to be considered potent.

Then, frankly, you had some curious pitching decisions from Van Horn, which is not something totally foreign here. At times, he's relied heavily on the Charley Boyces and Kevin Koppses to the point of undue criticism, but at others he's varied from making a quick change to leaving a pitcher in longer than many coaches would.

And again, I’m not nitpicking here. Van Horn's a very accomplished, savvy coach, and as adept a recruiter and motivator as you’ll find. But he's just as capable of misjudgments as most coaches.

Will Arkansas really ever be able to overcome all of this and deliver the guy a damned ring at some point? The 2024 roster should be quite loaded, as usual, and that's in large part due to a nice nucleus of returning arms and bats. If injuries or defections don't rob the roster too greatly, then guess what? This will be another Arkansas Razorback team with "title potential" in the offing.

The 2023 team also had a lot of "potential," too, but I’d argue that given all the issues cited above, they really overachieved in the greater calculus. Van Horn, in fact, still did a top-shelf job and maybe one of his absolute best. What would be ideal is if potential finally got fulfilled, stars and other cosmic whatnot aligned for a change, and this next group snaps a skid that the longtime coach simply doesn't deserve.

Are you tired of watered-down news and biased reporting? The Arkansas Times has been fighting for truth and justice for 48 years. As an alternative newspaper in Little Rock, we are tough, determined, and unafraid to take on powerful forces. With over 63,000 Facebook followers, 58,000 Twitter followers, 35,000 Arkansas blog followers, and 70,000 daily email blasts, we are making a difference. But we can't do it without you. Join the 3,400 paid subscribers who support our great journalism and help us hire more writers. Sign up for a subscription today or make a donation of as little as $1 and help keep the Arkansas Times feisty for years to come.

Commenting FAQs