College baseball rankings don’t matter in February. Tell yourself that over and over.
You can’t get to Omaha for the College World Series based on winter happenings.
But don’t tap the brakes after Arkansas went 3-0 at Globe Life Field last weekend during the College Baseball Showdown in Arlington, Texas.
That was the way D1Baseball analyst Mike Rooney viewed the way the Razorbacks played in sweeping Texas Tech, Texas and TCU.
“You shouldn’t pump the brakes (on Arkansas),” Rooney said. “That’s an awesome team.”
I’m going to mix polls here just for the sake of the Rooney radio interview Tuesday on the Morning Rush.
The USA Today Coaches Poll is used as our publication’s rankings of record, just to keep it simple. Arkansas was ranked No. 8 in that poll in the preseason, but coaches won’t vote again until March 8. The coaches poll will update weekly following the third weekend of the season, when a more complete picture is available of all teams.
Other polls have already updated, including D1Baseball’s poll. Not surprisingly, the D1Baseball update has Ole Miss (3-0) ranked No. 1, followed by Arkansas at No. 2 and Vanderbilt (2-0) at No. 3.
Mississippi State (2-1) is fifth despite losing to TCU in Arlington.
Rooney, who also is a contributor at ESPN, loves the Razorbacks. He picked them as his CWS champion in the preseason while most everyone else was picking Florida.
The Gators were a unanimous preseason No. 1 in the polls, but slipped after losing a series to Miami to open the season.
It sounded like Rooney just wanted to be different when he was asked about his pick Tuesday.
“I didn’t want to pick Florida,” Rooney said. “Now, they are good.”
But so are the Razorbacks.
“I love ‘em,” Rooney said. “They are so good up the middle with Casey Opitz at catcher, Robert Moore at second and Christian Franklin in center field. They have four preseason All-SEC picks as position players. That’s unheard of.
“Pitching was a concern after Connor Noland and Patrick Wick-lander struggled in the fall, but the pitching began to have clarity (in January) when you read what Dave Van Horn was saying. There is depth to this staff and I think the bullpen is going to be suffocating.
The word around college baseball is that Van Horn and his staff are recruiting at a monster level, comparing it to Alabama, Clemson and Georgia in football.
Rooney thinks it is only a matter of time before Arkansas wins a national championship.
The trick will be just to survive the SEC West. It could be that five or six teams from the West host NCAA regionals, some as national seeds that would be in line to host a super regional, too.
“The three teams (in Arlington) all have a chance to win the West,” Rooney said. “What you have to do is be one of those final two in the West (standings) and you will (host a super regional). That’s easy to say, but tough to do.”
Scouts who saw Arkansas in the fall are not surprised. One veteran watched the team’s fall series and said “it was like watching an NCAA regional. Both teams could probably make a regional.”
The problem for Van Horn is sorting out all of the talented pieces. He did not call on two of his veterans to pitch in Arlington. Connor Noland nor Wicklander got in a game, although both warmed up — Wicklander at the end of the Texas Tech game and Noland at the end of the TCU game.
There may be eight or nine pitchers on the staff capable of starting. The key might be what Van Horn wants to do at the back end of the bullpen.
One fascinating piece of the staff emerged in the middle of the TCU game when Van Horn gave one inning to true freshman Jaxon Wiggins.
At 6-5, 220 pounds, Wiggins is an imposing figure on the mound. The right-hander from Roland, Okla., touched 98 mph on the radar gun while mowing down three straight in the heart of the Frogs’ order in the sixth inning. He threw only 15 pitches.
TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle had the best line on what he saw from the UA staff on the weekend.
“It looked like they were having tryouts over there,” Schlossnagle said.