'An amazing run' ends for Hogs

Arkansas' Andrew Benintendi gets ready to hit during the Razorbacks' game against Florida Friday, May 22, 2015, at the SEC baseball tournament in Hoover, Alabama.
Arkansas' Andrew Benintendi gets ready to hit during the Razorbacks' game against Florida Friday, May 22, 2015, at the SEC baseball tournament in Hoover, Alabama.

HOOVER, Ala. -- Dave Van Horn wasn't exactly pleased with No. 20 Arkansas' 10-run loss to Florida on Friday at the SEC Tournament.

He wasn't heartbroken either.

Van Horn recognized the upside of saving Arkansas' tenuous pitching from another day's work, and he and the team were clearly happy to be headed home Saturday after a 12-day road trip that began May 11 with a bus trip to Omaha, Neb.

Van Horn had some uplifting words for the Razorbacks in the outfield of the Hoover Met after the loss, and a number of players came away from that postgame huddle smiling or laughing.

"I'm not terribly disappointed," Van Horn said moments later. "I told the team, 'Walk out of here with your head held up high. We ran out of pitching, bottom line. ... As of right now, our mind is just excited about Monday and figuring out where we're going to be next Friday."

NCAA regional bids come out Monday and if South Carolina doesn't make the field, as expected, Arkansas' streak of consecutive regionals, which will hit 14 on Monday, will rank No. 1 in college baseball's deepest conference.

Part of Van Horn's brief discussion with the Razorbacks -- who beat Tennessee (2-1) and No. 6 Florida (7-6) in Hoover before losing to No. 1 LSU (10-5) and Florida (10-0) -- was another reminder of how the Hogs turned their 11-12 start into a certain NCAA regional appearance.

"We're not really even thinking about these games anymore," said senior outfielder Joe Serrano, who had a 25-game streak of reaching base safely come to an end Friday against 6-7 Florida left-hander A.J. Puk. "They don't mean anything.

"From where we started off, Coach was saying in the huddle, we started off 12-12 overall, and a lot of people kind of put us out. I mean, we just made an amazing run."

The Razorbacks played nine SEC opponents at least two games since opening conference play with consecutive series losses to Vanderbilt and LSU, and they won 2 of 3 against seven of those teams, swept three games from Alabama and split a pair against Tennessee. They have gone 21-8 since falling to 14-14 after a 2-0 loss to Missouri State, which was the last time the Razorbacks had been shut out before Friday.

Arkansas hadn't lost consecutive games since March 20-21 against LSU before its final two games in Hoover.

"We're not feeling down, we're feeling great," junior outfielder Tyler Spoon said. "We feel like we've had a good road stretch these last couple of weeks, so honestly we're excited about a regional."

Van Horn said he hoped the Razorbacks have done enough to earn a seed at a nearby NCAA regional.

"I don't know where they'll send us," Van Horn said. "It's like I just told the team on March 24, when we were 12-12, we were just trying to figure out if we were going to flip this thing around. You could have sent us to the other side of the world and we were going to go play. We just wanted to go get in a regional.

"I told them they did it, they turned it around. We played good. We had two bad days because we didn't have enough pitching. But to answer your question, yeah, we'd like to stay close because we'd have more fans.

"We haven't played in front of our fans in a couple of weeks. I think they'll show up."

Serrano said he didn't care where the Razorbacks are sent this week. Spoon said he would appreciate somewhere close, like the regionals projected in Springfield, Mo., for Missouri State and in Stillwater, Okla., for Oklahoma State.

"Especially after going to Virginia last year," Spoon said. "Obviously there's no Arkansas fans in Virginia. If we can go somewhere close like that, maybe get some fans there, get some support, that would be awesome."

Sports on 05/24/2015

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