It’s officially win or go home for Arkansas baseball.
After a blistering 30-3 start to the season through mid-April and a subsequent No. 1 ranking atop the USA TODAY Sports baseball coaches poll for five straight weeks, the Razorbacks find themselves fighting for their postseason lives after dropping the winners’ bracket game of the Fayetteville Regional to Kansas State Saturday night at Baum-Walker Stadium.
The Diamond Hogs (44-15) will have to win three games over the next two days to advance to the Super Regionals, starting with Sunday’s elimination game against Southeast Missouri State at 1 p.m. CDT.
After Saturday’s loss, in which starter Hagen Smith gave up six runs (all earned) in the fifth inning to doom Arkansas, coach Dave Van Horn was rather defiant when asked about the long shot of winning three straight without seemingly having the pitching to do it.
“We can do it. We might not do it, but we can,” Van Horn said.
To that end, the Razorbacks will first turn to right-hander Gage Wood. Batesville native will be making his third start of the season when he faces the Redhawks’ Collin Wilma (3-5, 5.60 ERA).
No one expects Wood to go the distance; his longest outing this season were the five innings he pitched two weekends ago in the Razorbacks’ lone win at Texas A&M. Wood held the Aggies to two earned runs on seven hits that night. Arkansas rallied late to wrap up the SEC West division title.
Wood’s last outing was in the SEC Tournament against Kentucky when Van Horn had largely already waved the white flag for the rest of the week in Hoover. Wood allowed four runs and six hits in 2 2/3 innings in relief of Smith, given a short leash that day by a coach who already had an eye toward the NCAA Regionals.
Wood’s only other start this season came against Missouri State on April 30. He threw three scoreless innings in a 12-7 Arkansas midweek victory, retiring nine of the 10 batters he faced after yielding one hit and not allowing a walk.
Arkansas could benefit from a similar outing Sunday (not to mention a lot of run support) when it faces a SEMO team that lit up Razorback pitching for nine runs in Friday’s regional opener. In that game, SEMO erased an 8-0 deficit to tie the game before Arkansas rallied and pulled away for good in their last two innings at the plate.
Should Arkansas defeat SEMO, they’d meet Kansas State Sunday night at 6 p.m. The Hogs would need to beat the Wildcats twice in order to avoid being eliminated in the Regional round of the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year.
Sunday’s game against SEMO will be available to stream on ESPN+, meaning there will be no direct “television” coverage of the game on ESPN’s family of traditional broadcast channels (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, or SEC Network).
The game can be heard on the Razorbacks Sports Network through local FM and AM radio as well as streamed through the Varsity Network App.
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