Pressure for Van Horn to Win Early Lowering Somewhat

Fan fury at Arkansas athletics tempering slightly, lifting potential weight on Arkansas baseball

Arkansas Razorbacks shortstop Wehiwa Aloy is congratulated by coach Dave Van Horn after his homer in the Fayetteville Regional of the NCAA Tournament. | Michael Morrison-allHOGS Images

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Last season, the weight of the entire Arkansas athletics program was on baseball coach Dave Van Horn.

The football team put together a losing season and was one Bobby Petrino desperation hire that required pulling all kinds of strings away from being in the midst of a coaching search. The much hyped basketball team fell apart, giving way to the first losing record since the dark days of John Pelphrey and actually did lead to a coaching search as Eric Musselman bolted for the sun and cool air of the West Coast.

Fans were losing their minds. They were primed to take the slightest negativity and blow it up, so, with baseball being the last hope for some sort of good feeling, life around the Arkansas athletics program rested on every pitch and swing of the bat.

Van Horn admitted he and his coaches knew they didn't have a team built for the long strain of a national championship run. Still, with pressure mounting because of failures everywhere else, he used smoke, duct tape, mirrors, lucky clovers and just enough pitching from a wide range of guys behind ace Hagan Smith to stay at or near the top of the rankings most of the year.

"We don't have Smith this year," Van Horn said. "That's a once every now and then type of guy that you get to be around, that talent and what he did for our team. I mean, you take him off our team last year, we were probably pretty average because we were a pretty good fielding team, we didn't hit real well and we weren't very dynamic as far as some other things."

However, eventually, reality set in, and a Razorbacks team that scrapped its way into the first weekend of May with only seven loses went 4-9 to close the season. Unfairly, because of how poorly the other programs performed, the late season collapse to close a year that had been overachieved, left fans more grumpy than they might have been under different circumstances.

"There have been some things go down the last couple of years at the end of the season that have been hard to swallow," Van Horn said. "Honestly, behind closed doors, the coaches, we knew that maybe we weren't quite as good as we were ranked or whatever. We were just finding ways to win and credit to the players for that."

While it's looked at times like Van Horn might face the same pressures again this season, things have evened out a little. Pittman's football team bounced back with a winning season and was an interception away from eight wins.

Meanwhile, the basketball team fell apart once SEC play started and looked left for dead, but it is now a kick-out to the wing against Oklahoma from being on a three-game winning streak while still collecting a pair of Quad 1 wins and a little Kentucky whine to boot.

For the first time all season, Arkansas looked like it could truly compete in the SEC at Rupp Arena Saturday night. There's still plenty of reason to doubt the Hogs can pull out of a winning record, but there's at least good cause to watch and see in the final days leading up to opening day of baseball season.

This is great news for Van Horn. In 2021, following Pittman's first season where he led the Razorbacks three SEC wins for the first time since 2016 and Musselman's first trip to the Elite 8, the baseball team racked up 50 wins.

While history showing 50 wins might be possible with the pressure lowered a little, the more important thing is Van Horn isn't as likely to feel the urgency to rack up a ton of wins early in the season. That provides more of an opportunity to play with the line-up and also takes the edge off when deciding whether to take a risk on seeing what a freshman might have against quality competition early in the season.

It allows an opportunity to do what made Musselman so strong late in the season. Van Horn gets to gather as much intel as possible, has the opportunity to fiddle with perfecting team chemistry, and gets to enter SEC play knowing for certain his optimum line-up based on the current injury situation.

If the Razorbacks lose a few games along the way, but come away with valuable knowledge, then so be it. As long as the basketball team can win or play enough close games to keep Arkansas fans from entering the meat of the early baseball schedule angry and flustered, there's enough room to do what's best for the overall season.

Van Horn had to play last year like the College World Series was on the line from opening day. Ultimately, it hurt the team — that and injuries.

There wasn't anything left late in the year, and one pitcher can only carry a team so far late in the season no matter how great Smith is. If Van Horn can get into the season with fans feeling anything positive about Arkansas athletics as a whole, then he can manage a slow build that will peak late rather than early in the season.

If that happens, for the first time in a while, those disappointing finishes to the year will be a thing of the past. While basketball still has two more months and the full grind of the baseball season awaits, what happens over the next three weeks on the basketball court will impact things on the diamond more than most are willing to accept.

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