Hogs Inch Closer to Hosting, but One Data Point Still Troublesome

Arkansas Razorbacks make huge jump in college baseball polls

Arkansas Razorbacks pitcher Cole Gibler delivers a throw against the Tennessee Volunteers at Baum-Walker Stadium in Fayetteville, Ark. | Nilsen Roman-Hogs On SI Images

Dave Van Horn's Razorbacks will begin making their last regular season plea against Kentucky when the Hogs open their final SEC series of the year in Lexington Thursday evening at 5:30 p.m.

The first bit of good news came down early Monday morning with a major jump in the Baseball America poll to No. 10. Shortly after, it became official that the Hogs made a major jump from No. 17 to No. 12 in the D1Baseball poll.

Arkansas still has a tiny bit of wiggle room to squeeze into the Top 25 in RPI with at least a couple of road wins against a 30-win Wildcats team. The Razorbacks are currently at No. 26 in the RPI ratings.

Moving up a single spot may not seem to be that big of a deal, but in the selection committee room when talk is going on in regard as to which team should host, there is a mental edge in being able to say that in addition to all those Top 25 poll series wins, Arkansas is also ranked Top 25 in RPI

If any team the Hogs are up against for one of those last hosting spots can shoot back by saying Arkansas isn't even in the Top 25 in RPI, it will be difficult to end up hosting even with so much evidence showing there aren't 16 teams better than the Razorbacks. That's why the series win over Oklahoma was big, and why winning the series over Kentucky is pretty much required.

Taking the series over the Sooners, 2-1, drug the Hogs from No. 30 to No. 26 because Oklahoma had several solid non-conference teams that technically got added to the Razorbacks' composite RPI schedule. Meanwhile, Kentucky comes into the series ranked No. 30 in RPI, which doesn't seem extremely helpful at first glance, but this is a 30-win team with a 12-15 SEC record.

They are currently where the Hogs were this time last week without the benefit of nearly as much high quality winning. That means the Wildcats are riding high on the RPI success of their non-conference opponents.

Kentucky is able to benefit from an Ohio Valley region where the staff can schedule plenty of short distance games that carry high value. Not only do Murray State (28), Western Kentucky (28), Louisville (27) and Miami of Ohio (35) carry 27-35 wins each with short travel times, their overall schedules are pretty strong, which whips the 25% opponents' opponents RPI calculation up pretty high.

The good news is with a series win, Arkansas gets to take advantage of all the wins each of those teams have, but also wins by St. John's (28) and The Citadel (27) without having to absorb the negative that is their schedules.

That's been a big problem for Arkansas. The driving distance teams that typically make up much of the non-conference schedule have done a decent job of slowly raising the Hogs' strength of schedule this past month with Central Arkansas (29), Arkansas State (28), Arkansas-Little Rock (30) and Missouri State (30) stacking up wins, but Missouri State has been the only team in that group that has a solid group of opponents which bring any value to the Razorbacks' composite RPI schedule.

Northern Colorado brings in a strong list of opponents' opponents, but, unfortunately the Bears have only stacked up 15 wins. Northwestern State is also a double whammy with a weak schedule and only 25 wins, which probably played a big role in the first game of that series getting cancelled despite great weather rolling into Northwest Arkansas an hour after the original scheduled pitch time.

It's been a careful balance these past several weeks. Since the surprising sweep over an Alabama team that had won 18-straight at home, Arkansas has slowly evolved from a team that felt like it would find a way to lose to one that has felt like it will find some way to win, matter what, over the past two weekends.

If the Razorbacks can carry the momentum they have built onto the road in Lexington, the odds are high Arkansas will have fought its way back into one of those final few hosting spots. It likely comes down to winning the series over Kentucky.

Do that and it's probably locked up. Lose the series and it will take a big run in the SEC Tournament, which is something Van Horn probably doesn't want to deal with as he would rather have his players rested and healing where needed.

All three games will be streamed on the usual ESPN streaming services. Thursday and Friday's games will stream at 5:30 p.m. with the series closing at 1 p.m. Saturday.