FAYETTEVILLE — Dave Van Horn talked up his 2017 team, which finished 45-19, a 19-win improvement from 2016, after falling 3-2 to Missouri State in the NCAA Fayetteville Regional final on Monday.
“I thought we had a good season,” Van Horn said. “I obviously wish we were still playing this weekend. But I really couldn’t have asked a whole lot more from the team.
“They gave an incredible effort. From the day they walked in here last August to the last out in the ninth against Missouri State. I’m excited for the future. I’m looking forward to getting through the summer, getting through the draft to see where we’re at. … I’m just proud these guys hung in there and we turned it back around and got it where it needs to be.”
Van Horn said he’s encouraged by where the Arkansas pitching could wind up in 2018 and with the array of returning starters and younger players to fill in around them.
“You’ve got four or five starters, starting with catcher Grant Koch,” Van Horn said. “You’ve got Jax Biggers, who led our team in hitting and is solid out there. You’ve got [Jared] Gates coming back, [Eric] Cole coming back, [Dominic] Fletcher coming back. Then we’ll be plugging in some athletic kids around those guys, plus some guys that’ll just make that jump like everybody does from their freshman to their sophomore year.”
Koch said the just-completed season set the Razorbacks up for a good 2018.
“We’re going to lose some guys but that’s how it is every year,” Koch said. “You just have to kind of adjust and guys have to step up and you’ll see freshmen for sure.”
Power plays
The Razorbacks broke the school record with 619 strikeouts, smashing the previous record of 565 held by the 2007 team, and also hit 83 home runs, the highest total since the 2009 team hit a school-record 92 home runs and the third-highest mark at Arkansas.
“We could see the power in the fall,” Dave Van Horn said. “It had me concerned because I was kind of worried about our pitching, because we hit a lot of home runs in the fall. We thought we would be able to put up some big innings, which we did.”
Van Horn said the home run numbers were likely a crest based on having younger guys like Fletcher, who hit 12, to combine with veterans like Chad Spanberger (20), Grant Koch (13), Luke Bonfield (9) and Carson Shaddy (8).
“We’ll still hit our home runs, but I think we’ll hit a lot more doubles next year,” Van Horn said. “It’s hard to hit doubles when … teams are playing us on the warning track. We couldn’t hit the ball over Missouri State’s head hardly. They were way back there.”
Van Horn said first-year pitching coach Wes Johnson was excellent.
” I thought coach Johnson did a tremendous job of getting that pitching staff lined up and organized,” he said. “We had a plan when we went into every game. We’d meet and here’s how we’re going to run it, suggestions either way. How we’re going to come out of the pen in this situation. For the most part, it worked.”
Injury updates
Dave Van Horn said sophomore right-hander Isaiah Campbell should be fine for next season after having 13 bone spurs removed from his right (pitching) elbow.
He added that there is about a 50-50 chance right-hander Keaton McKinney, who needed Tommy John surgery after tearing his right ulnar collateral ligament, will be ready for the start of 2018 and that there is little chance right-hander Cody Scroggins will be available next year because his UCL tear occurred early in the season.
Infielder Hunter Wilson, who fouled a ball of the upper part of his right shin on March 14, is eligible for a medical redshirt and should have two seasons remaining.
“He probably would have been better off if it was broken, honestly,” Van Horn said. “They could have set it and let it heal. He’s getting better. He’s just now getting to the point where they’re letting him put pressure and jog on it a little bit.”
Van Horn said that testing revealed “some type of fracture” in Wilson’s leg.
Van Horn tree
Tony Vitello is the second assistant from Dave Van Horn’s coaching tree to become a head coach in the SEC. Rob Childress, a pitching coach for Van Horn during stops at Northwestern State and Nebraska, is the head coach at Texas A&M.
Other head coaches who are former assistants under Van Horn include Sam Houston State’s Matt Deggs, Wichita State’s Todd Butler, Arkansas-Little Rock’s Chris Curry and Louisiana Tech’s Lane Burroughs.