Razorbacks end season on the skid

FAYETTEVILLE -- Sometimes it takes a bad year to appreciate how good the good years were.

And Dave Van Horn's previous 13 seasons coaching Arkansas baseball range from good to great. From succeeding in 2003 retired Razorback icon Norm DeBriyn for whom Van Horn both played and coached, Van Horn through 2015 annually had his Razorbacks qualified for postseason regionals and four times advanced them to the College World Series, winning four Southeastern Conference West titles and shared one conference championship.

Obviously that postseason string ends now. Losing a school-record 13 consecutive from the second game of an April 30 SEC doubleheader through losing last week's three-game sweep at Mississippi State, Arkansas is one of the 14-team SEC's two teams omitted from the 12-team conference tournament starting today in Hoover, Ala., from which most and perhaps all will advance to NCAA regionals.

No regionals for Arkansas, not at 26-29 overall and 7-23 in the SEC, worst in the entire league.

A season that began with such promise, with Arkansas on its second February baseball weekend sweeping nationally ranked Rice, Houston and Texas Tech at the Minute Maid Classic at the major league Houston Astros' Minute Maid Park, ended in ignominy.

Starting pitching, with 2015 regulars Dominic Taccolini and Keaton McKinney only occasionally flashing their 2015 early form before injuries hampered their finishes and prevented them from pitching summer ball, and preseason all-American closer Zach Jackson miscast as a starter because the mainstays were ineffective, was the main culprit.

"I made the comment a month or two ago that this was going to be a little bit difficult this year," Van Horn said before the Razorbacks wrapped up in Starkville, Miss. "I could see it coming on the mound. Bottom line we don't have enough pitching."

The struggling starting pitching depleted the bullpen that began the season as Arkansas' pitching strength.

It all showed up in a 6.07 ERA for Arkansas' 30 SEC games and 5.00 ERA for its overall season.

However, it wasn't all pitching all the time doing in the Hogs.

Though hitting a respectable .275 for all 2016 games, and with 49 home runs, just four less than than the 2015 team even subtracting the 20 that turned-pro Golden Spikes-winning outfielder Andrew Benintendi hit, the Razorbacks in 2016 repeatedly failed to drive in runs in clutch situations.

"We didn't get the big hit," Van Horn was quoted time after time.

Defensively the Hogs overall were good and sometimes brilliant then occasionally awful.

Didn't seem to matter. At Baum Stadium they played three errorless games against Alabama and lost all three. Against Mississippi State they committed 10 errors in three games and lost all three.

Some games during their 13 game skid, the Hogs lost start to finish. Other they found excelling only exacerbated the pain.

The losing streak started with Alex Gosser's stunning two-run, pinch-hit single tying 8-8 in the eighth the 11-8 loss to the Texas A&M Aggies in 11 innings in the second game of an April 30 SEC doubleheader at Baum.

Losing a 9-1 lead piled on some of their best hitting of the season at LSU turned into a disastrous 10-9 10-inning loss, and the joy of Rick Nomura's eighth-inning, two-run homer putting Arkansas up 4-3 against Alabama at Baum quickly sorrowed in a 7-4 loss, with Alabama routing the bullpen in the ninth.

"It is what it is," Van Horn said after last Saturday's loss in Starkville. "We've lost them in many different ways."

They already "are working on it," Van Horn said, to correct that in 2017.

Van Horn's Arkansas record shows 13 years out of 14 his teams succeeded, and the records of his Nebraska and Northwestern State, Central Missouri and Texarkana Junior College vouch even more impressively.

The SEC better enjoy getting high off the Hogs now just as in 2015 it should have enjoyed beating the bejeebers out of a Mississippi State team, 8-22 in the SEC, that just won the conference crown for 2016.

There are some programs not advisable to bet against for more than a year or two. In SEC baseball, Arkansas and Mississippi State are two of them.

Sports on 05/24/2016

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