The Arkansas Razorbacks 2024 baseball season officially came to an end on Sunday after they picked up their second loss in the regional round. The Razorbacks were knocked out by Southeast Missouri State after falling to the RedHawks 6-3.
Following their elimination loss, head coach Dave Van Horn attempted to explain their poor home performance to end the season.
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“Well, we didn’t pitch very good. I mean, that was pretty obvious last month,” opened Van Horn. “We were rolling pretty good early… you got two lefts and a right, and they’re all gonna give you innings; they’re all experienced. And then, all of a sudden, you can see a little crack in the armor. One got wild, one’s always having issues with his arm, and the steady was Smith. Smith is the guy. He was a rock; he carried us. The whole season, that guy carried us.”
“I just think that the pitching got a little tired. The offense was a roller coaster all year — we had to fight for so many wins. You go back and look at our scores; I’m gonna say in the SEC, we had played 15-18 games, win or lose by less than three runs. Everything was tight. We didn’t blow anybody out (and) they didn’t blow us out… it was stressful. And I think it beat us up a little bit mentally.”
Arkansas entered the regional round with a 33-3 regular season home record. However, as the host team of the Fayetteville Regional, they struggled in their last two games: 1st losing to Kansas State narrowly on Saturday 7-6, followed by their aforementioned loss to Southeast Missouri State. They would end the
As Van Horn highlighted above, there are a number of issues one could point to as to why Arkansas struggled at home in the postseason. But for the head coaches’ money, sheer exhaustion led to the demise of Razorbacks baseball in Fayetteville.
“We came back rested, and we swung the bat so good on Friday; we swung it really well yesterday (but) left 13 out there,” Van Horn said. “And then today, it looked like we were exhausted. I didn’t really know what to do or say. SEMO just did a tremendous job of pitching to us today. But it’s been a battle. I would say: when you don’t pitch good, you don’t have a chance.”
Although Arkansas season is over and did not end the way they had hoped, it was still a solid regular season by the numbers. The Razorbacks finished the year with a 44-16 overall record and were in the running for the SEC regular season title before losing their last series of the season to Texas A&M. And the gauntlet known as the SEC Arkansas won .667% of their games, finishing with their conference record of 20-10.
Arkansas’s dream of becoming 2024 College World Series champions is over. Now, Van Horn must look to the offseason to retool and revamp the roster in hopes of making a deeper push into the postseason in 2025.
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