FAYETTEVILLE — When Arkansas left Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock following its annual game there in March, it did so as a team below .500 and in danger of missing the NCAA postseason for the first time since 2001.
The Razorbacks lost to Memphis 5-4 that night to fall to 11-12 overall. Arkansas was also 1-5 in Southeastern Conference play after series losses to Vanderbilt and LSU.
"That was the last straw," third baseman Bobby Wernes said. "We played well, but there was just one little mistake at the end that cost us. We weren't going to let that happen again.
"When you're below .500, nobody really has any expectations of you. That's fine. It didn't matter what anyone said, we were going to get it done."
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A second game against the Tigers in downtown Memphis awaited the next night. It was a game and trip that transformed the Razorbacks' season.
Behind a strong pitching outing from Keaton McKinney and James Teague, Arkansas beat Memphis 7-3 at AutoZone Park to reach .500 overall again. The Razorbacks never had a losing record the rest of the year.
No one can really pinpoint what happened on the Memphis trip, but several players agree that was when the season changed. Zach Jackson said players developed new superstitions that night they've kept through the rest of the year. Others attribute the turnaround to a change in mindset.
In the weeks that followed, Arkansas began to look like a different team. The offense improved, highlighted by Andrew Benintendi's triple crown chase; the defense became one of the nation's best, including one stretch in which it committed just one error in eight games; and most importantly, the pitching staff - which had given up 89 runs in the 11 games prior to Memphis - began to keep the Razorbacks in tight games.
"Jackson Lowery and I were talking before the (second Memphis) game, and we said, 'We're just not throwing well. We need to just kind of stop being childish, immature and stop worrying about it, and just pitch like know we can,'" Teague said. "Memphis was kind of a turnaround for us to say that we were just tired of being mediocre and below mediocre."
The Razorbacks returned to Fayetteville and to SEC play the next night with the series opener against Ole Miss. On the way home, Arkansas' bus drove through a strong storm system that included straight-line winds.
Near Russellville, the bus swerved to avoid debris scattered along Interstate 40.
“When that wind hit the bus, it was spooky,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said. “That bus driver was holding onto that wheel with two hands and I was right there asking if he needed some help. It made me nervous.”
The Razorbacks returned home around 2:45 a.m., about 15 hours before first pitch against the Rebels. Playing in their third city in three days, Arkansas' players were exhausted.
But like the night before, the Razorbacks won thanks to a strong pitching performance.
With Arkansas leading 5-3, Jackson worked around the bases loaded with no outs in the top of the seventh inning. Jackson struck out the Rebels' three, four and five batters in the lineup to end the threat.
"It was crazy, but you almost expect that out of Zach," Wernes said.
The Razorbacks went on to win 10-3 and two days later won their first SEC series. The team hasn't looked back since.
Arkansas is 24-10 since that loss in North Little Rock and didn't lose two games in a row again until it ran out of arms at last week's conference tournament. After the series losses to Vanderbilt and LSU, the Razorbacks didn't lose another series in SEC play, winning seven of their last eight and splitting a rain-shortened series against Tennessee.
"We never felt out of it," infielder Michael Bernal said. "As bad as things got and as much as our record said otherwise, we never felt like we were out."
Among the series wins was one at then-No. 1 Texas A&M when Arkansas overcame a five-run deficit to win the second game.
Players were cognizant of the series win streak as the season went along. It was the longest such stretch for the Razorbacks since Van Horn's 2004 College World Series team.
It was a memorable run no one saw coming given the start to the year.
"With Twitter, Facebook and everything now, you constantly get reminded about it," Wernes said, "but I think we've done a good job of taking it one game at a time. Obviously that approach has worked.
"We've looked at it as taking care of business each individual game, and when you go about it like that good things will happen."