Arkansas Online

Hogs won without dominant rotation

BOB HOLT

FAYETTEVILLE — The weekend pitching rotation was anything but set for the Arkansas Razorbacks this season.

Figuring out who would start, and in what order, became a weekly guessing game.

In the final 13 weekends — all 10 SEC series, the SEC Tournament, NCAA regional and super regional — the University of Arkansas had nine combinations for its starting pitchers.

Using three pitchers in the same order happened just twice on consecutive weekends, when Patrick Wicklander, Zebulon Vermillion and Lael Lockhart started at Mississippi State and against Auburn and Wicklander, Peyton Pallette and Lockhart started at Ole Miss and against Texas A&M.

Wicklander, Pallette and Lockhart were the most frequently used trio with a total of four series. Seven pitchers got at least one start against SEC opponents and in the NCAA Tournament.

“If you really take a step back and look at it, we didn’t have three conference starters that we just knew that every time we gave them the ball we had a great opportunity to win,” Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said this week. “We didn’t settle in on anything.

“It was Patrick Wicklander, and then, ‘Let’s try this guy and that guy, and then we give the ball to Kevin [Kopps] or [Ryan] Costeiu or [Caden] Monke in there a little bit.’”

Also getting starts were Caleb Bolden, Jaxon Wiggins and Kopps.

“We pitched about five guys down the stretch, maybe six,” Van Horn said. “Just because that’s what was winning. That was the formula.”

It was a formula that worked well for the Razorbacks, mainly because Kopps put together one of the best seasons ever by a college relief pitcher.

Arkansas (50-13) was ranked No. 1 most of the season; won 50 or more games for the fourth time; won the outright regular-season championship for first time since 1999; and won its first SEC Tournament title.

Kopps, a senior righthander from Sugar Land, Texas, had a 12-1 record with 11 saves and a 0.90 ERA. He pitched 892/3 innings and had 131 strikeouts and 18 walks while allowing 50 hits. Opponents batted .162 against him.

“He found himself, man, on the mound,” Van Horn said. “He just got comfortable, and he could command the baseball like no other pitcher I’ve really ever had just by working at it and repeating everything. His delivery. It was amazing.”

Kopps was voted SEC pitcher of the year by the conference coaches and became the first reliever to win the Dick Howser Trophy, voted on by the National College Baseball Writers Association for the national player of the year. He also was Collegiate Baseball’s national player of the year and is among three finalists along with Vanderbilt starting pitchers Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker for the Golden Spikes Award, which USA Baseball in July will present to its choice for top amateur player in the nation.

“We’ll be able to talk about Kevin many years down the road and how he got in shape, how he changed his body and got his mind right,” Van Horn said. “The way he ate, nutrition.

“I think it’s going to help a player or two in the future here, if they’ll listen and look at the success he had. Maybe not to the extreme of Kevin — the success that he had — but it’s going to help make some of these players down the road better.”

Wicklander, a junior lefthander, emerged as a reliable No. 1 starter and was 7-1 with a 2.09 ERA in 772/3 innings with 85 strikeouts.

“I’ve coached a few teams that have won 50-plus and we’ve always had three starters that we knew pretty much all year and they stayed healthy, and we had a closer,” said Van Horn, who led Central Missouri to a 51-11 record and NCAA Division II national championship in 1994 and Nebraska to records of 51-17 and 50-16 in 2000 and 2001. “We could hit a little bit and field.

“This team was a little different. We could really field, and we had some great days at the plate. We hit home runs, and we walked.”

Arkansas hit a school-record 109 home runs — breaking the mark of 98 in 69 games in 2018 — and drew 360 walks to fall one shy of the record 361 in 66 games in 1985.

Sophomore second baseman Robert Moore hit a teamhigh 16 home runs and freshman Cayden Wallace, who played in the outfield and on the infield, and junior first baseman Brady Slavens each hit 14. Junior center fielder Christian Franklin and senior designated hitter Matt Goodheart, who also played in the outfielder, each hit 13.

Charlie Welch, used primarily as a pinch hitter and designated hitter late in the season, batted .388 in 67 atbats.

Among Razorbacks who regularly were in the lineup, Slavens led with a .284 batting average. Moore batted .283, Wallace .279 and Franklin .274. The team average was .267.

“We didn’t hit for a high batting average, but we faced some incredible pitching because of our schedule,” Van Horn said. “We didn’t load up on Tuesdays and Wednesdays where we were scoring 15 runs and getting 15 hits very many times like maybe some other places did. That kept the average down.”

Van Horn credited his players and assistant coaches — Matt Hobbs, Nate Thompson and Bobby Wernes — for working together to win big without a dominating rotation and a bunch of .300 hitters.

“This was very unique,” Van Horn said. “I think the coaches did a great job. We got them rounded up and we figured it out and we went with it. The players bought in and they played great.”

Arkansas finished 26-8 against SEC teams, including 4-0 in the tournament, after being picked third in the West in a preseason poll.

“We beat everybody,” Van Horn said. “We beat ‘em all.”

Van Horn repeatedly praised the Razorbacks for always being ready to play.

“They showed up every day and played hard and tried to win,” he said. “You can say that teams do that, but we backed it up.”

Arkansas was 31-9 against teams that made the NCAA Tournament field.

“It’ll be a season that I’ll never forget,” Van Horn said. “We had 50 wins against really the toughest schedule in the country, and I don’t even think it’s close.”

Arkansas was 7-0 at neutral sites — opening with victories over Texas Tech, Texas and TCU in Arlington, Texas — and 13-5 on the road and 30-8 at home.

“We had some great players who had really good seasons,” Van Horn said. “We had some players who had OK seasons. But they showed up every day.

“I’m proud of what happened. As far as from Day One when we started playing until the end of the season. You take away the last two games and it was an unbelievable season.”

The last two games — losses to North Carolina State in the super regional — kept the Razorbacks from making the College World Series.

Arkansas won the opener 21-2, which was a misleading score because after the Wolfpack fell behind 10-1 through five innings, they used pitchers who normally wouldn’t be in weekend games.

North Carolina State came back to beat the Razorbacks 6-5 and 3-2. Kopps made his only start of the season in the finale and went eight innings after throwing two the previous game.

“We achieved everything we wanted to do except getting to Omaha and winning the national championship,” said Van Horn, who has eight College World Series appearances, including two with Nebraska and six with Arkansas. “We got beat by a really good team, an older team, an experienced team.

“They had a really good left-handed closer [Evan Justice] that didn’t give us much.”

North Carolina State (37-18) is 33-9 in its last 42 games, including 2-0 at the College World Series, with victories over Stanford 10-4 and Vanderbilt 1-0 going into Thursday. The Wolfpack went 3-0 in the Ruston Regional — and beat host Louisiana Tech twice — to earn a shot at Arkansas.

“When we saw the bracket, we immediately said, ‘If we win our regional, we’re going to play N.C. State. They’re going to win it,’ ” Van Horn said. “They were a preseason team ranked in the top 15. They got off to a bad start.

“They have a veteran team, very mature team. We knew it was going to be a battle.

“It doesn’t surprise me that they’re winning up there [in Omaha] because they don’t really get scared. They’re older.

“They just won two out of three games at Baum Stadium. It’s not scary up there compared to here, the way I look at it. I’m happy for them. They played hard and man, those guys really wanted to win and they pitched incredible.”

It’s tough for college coaches to set their rosters this summer because the MLB Draft won’t be held until July 11-13.

“It’s like it always is,” Van Horn said when asked about expectations for this 20th season at Arkansas. “Come in and get better in the fall, figure out who we have once this draft’s complete and kids have made their decisions.

“I think you’re going to get a good mix of some veterans and some young guys out there and I think we’ll be right there in the middle of the league, in the hunt so to speak, come next April.

“We still have to see where the dominoes fall and where we’re at. But we feel good about the talent that we have signed. If we can get them in here, the future is bright.”

Van Horn said the SEC, which had nine teams in the NCAA Tournament, will be incredible as usual.

“You’ve got two new coaches,” Van Horn said. “You’ve got a new coach at Texas A&M [Jim Schlossnagle]. You’ve got another new coach that’s going to be at LSU.

“The league gets tougher and tougher it seems like every year, and we’re one of the tough ones.”

Sports

en-us

2021-06-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.arkansasonline.com/article/283128546826016

WEHCO Media