Baseball notes: Beware Trojans; Losing SEC series good omen for Hogs

Arkansas Razorbacks fans will be Texas A&M fans this week

Brent Iredale with Cam Kozeal and Kuhio Aloy after hitting his seventh home run of the year against the Central Arkansas Bears. The Razorbacks won 9-2. | Nilsen Roman - Hogs on SI Images

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The Arkansas Razorbacks are set to welcome Little Rock to Baum-Walker Stadium and it may not be the best time to do so.

In addition to being the only in-state team to take down the Hogs, the Trojans were on an eight-game winning streak, including a win at Ole Miss, before that streak ended with an 8-6 loss against Western Illinois Saturday. Little Rock stunned Arkansas, 17-7, the first time the two teams played in 2019.

The next time the Razorbacks dropped a game to the Trojans was 11-4 in 2023. Despite those losses, the Hogs lead the series 5-2, and although Dave Van Horn schedules a game in Little Rock each season, none of the games against the Trojans have been played there.

Hogs have room to gain ground this week

Despite losing the series to Texas A&M in Fayetteville over the weekend, there is plenty of opportunity for Arkansas to gain ground in the regular season championship race. Texas, which currently leads the second place Razorbacks by three games, hosts the Aggies in what is expected to be the most explosive SEC series of the season.

Not only is it a battle between rivals and two of the hottest teams in all of college baseball, but there is extreme heat between the schools over the Longhorns signing former Aggies coach Jim Schlossnagle away from Texas A&M while he had the team playing for the national championship in Omaha last summer. To add fuel to the fire, when asked about it in a press conference, Schlossnagle went after a reporter for daring to ask about talk he was heading to Texas, calling the reporter selfish for daring to suggest he might consider leaving.

The clip barely had time to go viral before he bolted to work for his friend Chris Del Conte in Austin. Arkansas fans will be counting on the bitterness to boil over into payback for the Aggies, setting up a battle for the SEC lead the following week at Baum-Walker.

The two SEC series losses Arkansas needed

Razorbacks fans have hit the panic button a bit this week after the Hogs lost their second SEC series of the season in a rushed, lightning delayed series against Texas A&M. While Arkansas fans suffer from chronic "Why can't we have nice things?" syndrome, this is actually a good sign.

Traditionally, especially in recent seasons, the Hogs haven't handled extreme success well heading into the postseason. It takes a few stumbles at some point in the SEC regular season to get Arkansas in the right head space once regionals crank up.

In 2022, the Razorbacks lost SEC series to Texas A&M, Alabama, Vanderbilt and Florida. Despite the setbacks, Arkansas went five games deep in the College World Series before being eliminated, 2-0, by eventual national champion Ole Miss.

In 2019, the Hogs lost to Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M (quite the recurring trend), then made a run to Omaha, taking down the Rebels in the Super Regional. In 2018, a painful season in Razorbacks lore, Arkansas dropped its first two SEC series to Florida and Ole Miss.

The Hogs then got swept by Mississippi State before losing series to LSU and Georgia. That resulted in a run to the championship series and the infamous dropped pop-up foul ball against Oregon State that would have given the Razorbacks their first national championship.