Following the series finale against Texas A&M, Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn shared his thoughts on the difficulty of balancing the end of the regular season with the upcoming SEC Tournament.
In that regular-season finale, the Razorbacks lost 14-4 in seven innings. It was a tough way for an excellent regular season to end and resulted in a series loss to the Aggies for Arkansas.
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“Obviously, you don’t want to get beat even if it’s by one run,” Dave Van Horn said. “But the game started getting to the point there when they scored six that we needed to make a move. We didn’t get a score when we came in and then, obviously, they kind of put us away.”
It was just a one-run game until the sixth inning. That’s when the Aggies blew it open and by the end of the seventh, the run-rule was in effect. It became Arkansas’ first series loss since their last road series against Kentucky.
Ultimately, with postseason play just around the corner, Dave Van Horn made the decision that it was better to rest up for the SEC Tournament than to try and win the finale once Texas A&M pulled away.
“We didn’t want to bring in a pitcher or two that had already thrown. It wasn’t going to help us maybe just to hold them there. We just tried to finish out the game. We threw a couple of pitchers that we need come Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. It was a bunch of unfortunate breaks. A couple of bloop hits. A couple of things went their way. Plus, they had good hitters in that lineup and it was over,” Van Horn said.
“So, don’t like losing at all but we won the West and I don’t know. Sometimes, you’ve got to lose a game to win a game.”
Dave Van Horn further went on to explain what he means when he says that a team may need to lose a game to win a game.
“Sometimes you’ve got to lose a game, or let one go, to save people to win a game down the road. That’s kind of where we were pitching-wise, injury-wise, rest-wise,” Van Horn said. “If we win the game, that’s great, but it was a real slim chance that we were going to come back and win that game with what they had left in their bullpen. Their ace reliever that threw 46 pitches on Thursday, so no reason for us to burn two more pitchers to get through that thing.”
On Wednesday, Arkansas is going to play its first SEC Tournament game in Hoover, against the winner of the Alabama–South Carolina game.
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