FAYETTEVILLE -- The message Arkansas baseball Coach Dave Van Horn sent to his team last week, after the Razorbacks won their fifth consecutive SEC series, was that they hadn't done anything yet, and a bad couple of weeks could shove them to the back of the pack again in the SEC West.
After the No. 20 Razorbacks (29-18, 14-10 SEC) notched their first sweep of the season at Alabama last weekend, Van Horn said he hopes the Hogs won't get caught up in the talk of Arkansas' potential for hosting an NCAA regional.
"We're just trying to get in a regional," Van Horn said after his monthly address to the Swatter's Club at the Hilton Garden Inn. "Honestly, we still have a lot of work to do. We can start getting all happy about where we're at, drop six straight and we're right back where we were. So we're still keeping that approach of just win that next game and go from there."
The Razorbacks' schedule has been reduced to a home series against Tennessee (18-24, 7-17), which begins Friday at Baum Stadium, a road game at Creighton and a finishing series at Georgia (22-25, 7-16) next week before the SEC Tournament.
Van Horn told the Swatter's Club crowd the Razorbacks had gone 13-3 since he last talked to the group.
"That's all right, I tell you," Van Horn said, "especially with the teams we've played."
The only SEC team to win six consecutive series this year, Arkansas has shot up 47 spots in the D1Baseball.com RP rankings over the past three weeks to reach No. 37. Arkansas can win seven consecutive series for the first time as an SEC member and the third time in school history by taking the series this weekend against Tennessee.
Van Horn said he hadn't broached the subject of hosting an NCAA regional with his team and only briefly touched on it when asked by an audience member after his talk and by a media member later.
"If we were to win the next couple of series, I think we'd get in the talk, but I don't know," Van Horn said. "I think we'd have to probably do a little damage in the [SEC] tournament. I just want to get through Tennessee, get through finals and go from there."
Van Horn related an anecdote from the Razorbacks' key series victory at top-ranked Texas A&M on April 18-19 that illustrated how Arkansas' season has turned around from an 11-12 start. The Aggies blasted Arkansas 13-6 in the opening game of the series after a rainout Friday set up a Saturday doubleheader. The second game was also postponed by rain late Saturday, just after Zach Jackson served up a wind-blown grand slam to Texas A&M's Nick Banks that gave the Aggies an 8-3 lead after six innings.
Standing on the field prior to the resumption of that game Sunday morning, Van Horn said he turned to assistant coach Tony Vitello and said, "We have nine outs. If we were to come back and win this game and win the next one, this would be my best day on a baseball field."
The Razorbacks scored one run in the seventh inning and five in the eighth to beat the Aggies 9-8. They then took the series with an 8-2, rain-delayed victory behind a six-run first inning that supported freshman right-hander Keaton McKinney.
Arkansas has won five of its past six series finales, and McKinney (4-1, 3.06 earned-run average), who was named SEC pitcher of the week Monday, has gotten stronger week by week in those games. The 6-5 McKinney, of Ankeny, Iowa, allowed two hits in his 4-0 shutout victory over the Crimson Tide on Saturday.
Van Horn said the team's confidence level right now is peaking.
"I'd say now is the most confident we've been all season, obviously because we're winning," he said. "We feel like we're going to win when we go on the field, because we've proved week in and week out that we're a solid defensive team, the pitchers are doing better and we've hit enough."
Arkansas pitchers have held opponents to two runs or less in five of the past seven games and has posted a 1.20 ERA in that span.
The Razorbacks have won six consecutive SEC series for the first time since the 2004 team did it en route to earning a spot in the College World Series. Arkansas won seven consecutive series twice in the Southwest Conference, in 1979 and 1990.
Sports on 05/05/2015