Arkansas joined the short list of national seeds eliminated from the 2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament on Sunday following a shocking 6-3 loss to Southeast Missouri State in the Fayetteville Regional. The Razorbacks expected to make a deep postseason run, but the bats went cold against the Redhawks’ pitching, scoring its fewest runs in seven games.
“We swung it really well (Saturday), left 13 out there, and today it looked like we were exhausted,” Van Horn said after the loss. “I didn’t really know what to do or say. But I think SEMO just did a tremendous job of pitching to us today.”
Arkansas lost nine of its last 13 games to finish the 2024 season with a 44-16 (.733) record. The Razorbacks also lost back-to-back games in Fayetteville for the first time since 2022. This is the second time in as many seasons Arkansas was eliminated from its own regional.
OPENING STATEMENT:
“What a great job by SEMO’s pitchers today. I mean, they threw four guys at us that really located. You know, they pitched out of a couple of jams, but the starter got them off to a really good start just throwing strikes and giving their guys an opportunity to get a lead.
“Probably the tough one for us is we’re down 6-1 and we had a leadoff single and a double in the seventh. We’re thinking if we can cut this lead in half, get it to 6-3 at a minimum that inning, maybe we get a reliever. You know, he gets a ground ball to third, a popup, another ground ball, and we don’t score. That was difficult. But you got to give them credit. They pitched us good. They kept us off balance. Lot of off-speed, especially the first guy, (Collin) Wilma. He threw against us the other day, he was pretty good. So we’d seen him, but he was better today, obviously, and he stepped it up. Congratulations to Andy (Sawyers) and those guys getting a chance to continue on.”
ON LOSING LAST TWO GAMES AT HOME AFTER BEING DOMINANT ALL SEASON IN FAYETTEVILLE:
“Well, we didn’t pitch very good, that was obvious the last month. We were rolling pretty good early. You got bing, bang, boom; you got one, two, three; you got two lefts and a right, and they’re all going to give you innings. They’re all experienced, and then all of a sudden, you can see the crack in the armor. One got wild, one was having issues with his arm, and the steady was (Hagan) Smith. Smith was the guy. He was the rock. He carried us. The whole season, that guy carried us.
“You know, I just think that the pitching got a little tired. Offense has been a rollercoaster all year, whether it’s a shoulder injury or a bad start for different players. We had to fight for so many wins. Just go back and look at our scores. I’m gonna say in the SEC, we played 15 to 18 games that win or lose by less than three runs. Everything was tight. We didn’t blow anybody out. They didn’t blow us out. Lots of 5-4, 3-2, man it was stressful.
“I think maybe it just beat us up a little bit mentally. By the time we got done at (Texas) A&M, I was hoping we’d recover a little bit. I thought we had. We hit good at the tournament, but we didn’t pitch good at the tournament at all. We gave up nine runs, and I don’t know how many else. We came back, rested, and we swung the bats so good on Friday. We swung it really well (Saturday), left 13 out there, and (Sunday) it looked like we were exhausted. I didn’t really know what to do or say. But I think SEMO just did a tremendous job of pitching to us today.
“But, it’s been a battle, and I would say that’s probably — when you don’t pitch good, you don’t have a chance. Because the pressure of hitting this type of pitching day in and day out, you got to stop people, and we struggled a little bit the last few weeks.”
ON DECISIONS THAT NEED TO BE MADE THIS OFFSEASON:
“Well, I don’t think there’s a lot of decisions we have to make this offseason. We’re gonna lose almost all our players again for the third year in a row. Really, since ’21 we’ve had to almost start over. You have a couple of freshmen and maybe one or two sophomores that have shown some stuff. But we’ve lost our complete outfield again. They’ll all be gone. We’re gonna lose the second baseman. I don’t think the first baseman will be back. Starting catcher is gone. Starting third baseman graduates. Your whole rotation will probably go if they get an opportunity.
“I mean, I could go on and on. I think about it every day. It’s just the way it is these days. We’ve got kids coming in. We’re gonna get hit in the draft again. Last year, the draft killed us. Absolutely killed us. We lost four freshmen last year that would have been freshmen on this team. They got 11 million total for all four of them. You’re just hoping to get a couple of them, just get one of them. We didn’t get any of them. So that’s our battle. We know it. We got some good young guys in the program that are going to get better and gain some experience, but you can’t — we got to have more. We’ll be working hard.”
ON HAGAN SMITH:
“Well, my thought on him is he’s one of the best pitchers I’ve ever had. He’s such a difference maker for our team. Just without him, pretty much taking us five, six, seven innings in game one of every SEC series and giving us an opportunity to save our bullpen. Most of the time we end up winning that game, and we find a way to win another game. Swept a few series here. I mean, you take him off our team and we’re just really average. That’s the way it is. One guy can make the difference.
“You got kids that are jumping around in the portal and teams are paying these kids, somebody is. You snag a guy and he pitches you to the World Series or hits you to the World Series — it happened last year and there’s some of that going on. I mean, it’s about who can get a break now and get an older kid to come in here and fill in. I mean, I look at SEMO’s team, that’s one of the oldest teams we’ve faced all year. That’s one of the oldest teams we’ve faced all year by a lot. Right fielder is 24 years old, a couple of 23-year-olds, 22-year-olds. Now, they got a freshman playing second base that hit a home run today and that’s rare these days, especially in the mid-majors. They’ve been really old. That’s what you get. But you take Hagen Smith away from us and we’re pretty average…
“I could go on and on about personnel and what we got to do for the future because my mind’s already hitting there. It never really leaves there. It comes to the field and practice, play games, but, I mean, you got to look down the road a year or two. But Hagen Smith, I have talked with him and he’s gonna be a high first-round pick. So to speak, the hay was in the barn even though his last couple outings weren’t great. If he’d have had two great outings it might have messed up some people. I think he’ll be one of the top 10 picks. Could be second, third; could’ve been first. Might be fifth or sixth probably would be my guess. Honestly, I just think he ran out of gas even though we rested him a lot this year. We kept an inning back from him. We were hoping to get it last night. Didn’t happen.”
ON BEING SURPRISED THE OFFENSE SLOWED DOWN IN THE ELIMINATION GAME:
“I was really surprised. We didn’t think it would go down like this. I think it’s a combination of their pitchers doing a really good job of mixing pitches and locating, and our guys might have been a little bit tired from yesterday’s ball game. You can talk about it when you get home at midnight or later and you unwind. You take a shower and next thing you know it’s 1:30, 2 o’clock. We got breakfast at nine. We’re having a scouting report. You know, maybe I learned something — let them sleep in until 12 o’clock and tell them to show up and we’ll do it like we do in summer league and just play. I just felt like we were just slow.
“Today’s game reminded me of the game in ’17 when we had to play until 1, 2, 3 in the morning in the rain. I think that was ’17 against Missouri State when balls were hydroplaning through the outfield. We won the game, and we had to play one more, a winner-take-all on Monday. I can remember when I got in bed the sun was coming up, so it’s six or seven o’clock. When I got up here at 12:30 the whole team was already here and everybody was bouncing around in the locker room. I thought, we’re getting ready to win this thing and move on, and it just didn’t happen. We couldn’t hit. They had already thrown their better pitchers. I kind of saw that today. It reminded me of that a little bit.”
ON IF HE WOULD CONSIDER ANY CHANGES WITH THE OFFENSE PHILOSOPHY:
“[Nate Thompson] is ate up with offense and analytics. He really tries to train a swing. He does a great job and probably nobody works harder than him at it. You could always make adjustments. And a lot of times I think what you’re talking about is maybe a little bit more of an approach. It’s always important to do that, but we got to get a little better athlete. We can’t just have eight guys that hit homers. I like guys that hit doubles and I like guys that hit homers, but you got to have some guys that can run too. You got to be able to create offense on the days the wind is blowing in, or they’re really good on the mound and you’re having trouble making contact. That’s something that we want to do, and we’re trying to get the right players. The four guys that we lost last year that were all high school kids, those kids could all really run and they could hit and play. It kind of devastated us a little bit and it threw us back. So yeah, always looking to get better and make adjustments.”
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