FAYETTEVILLE -- Relief ace Matt Cronin and second baseman Carson Shaddy will be on the 27-man travel roster for the No. 4 Arkansas Razorbacks this weekend, but Cronin is not likely to pitch and Shaddy's right hand is still hurting.
Coach Dave Van Horn said Cronin's diagnosis of mononucleosis hasn't changed, but "they don't feel like it's maybe a super bad case of it. He's feeling a lot better, but there is a protocol and we have to go by it."
Van Horn added that Cronin has not been cleared to pitch.
Shaddy will be 12 days out from taking a pitch off the top of his right hand when the Razorbacks open their three-game series at SEC West rival LSU on Friday. The senior from Fayetteville has missed the past four games, all victories for the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (32-13, 13-8 SEC), and is questionable for the LSU series.
"He's getting close," Van Horn said. "There's no broken bone. It's just a deep bruise. He's trying to swing the bat, but he's probably 70 percent at the most right now. If we played tonight, I wouldn't start him."
Shaddy took a few swings in batting practice Wednesday, but his hand was clearly an issue as he dropped his helmet in frustration after his turn in the cage.
Possum play
LSU turned the interloping opossum at Alex Box Stadium in its last home series against the Razorbacks in 2016 into a big deal. The fans embraced the "Rally Possum" cry -- turning it into T-shirts, memes and stuffed possums -- and the Tigers' players ran with it as well.
Arkansas junior Blaine Knight was on the mound for the possum invasion.
"Hopefully, if they can keep animals off the field this year, that'd be pretty nice," Knight said.
The Razorbacks took a 9-1 lead into the bottom of the fifth inning of that game and were ahead 9-4 when the possum made its entrance, causing a delay of several minutes.
"I would tell you this, somebody put that possum underneath that fence," Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said Wednesday. "You can take that to the bank."
LSU scored four runs in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game, then won 10-9 with a run in the 10th inning en route to a series sweep.
Van Horn was asked whether he'd been in games where animals have reached the playing surface.
"I've had an animal come on the field before, but it's usually a squirrel or a cat," he said. "Sometimes a cat chasing a squirrel."
Rotation update
Dave Van Horn said he would wait to decide Sunday's starting pitcher for the LSU series after going with right-hander Blaine Knight (7-0, 2.45 ERA) and left-hander Kacey Murphy (5-3, 2.54) in the first two games.
"We'll leave Sunday open," Van Horn said. "We'll just do what we need to do to get there. If we need to throw [Isaiah] Campbell out of the pen or decide to throw somebody else, we will."
Campbell (3-4, 4.17 ERA) has been up and down in his 10 starts and is coming off a rough appearance in Sunday's 9-7 victory over Alabama. The 6-4 right-hander faced 8 batters, got 4 outs, walked 3 and gave up 1 hit while allowing 1 earned run in 41 pitches.
"Obviously last weekend didn't go the way he wanted it to," Knight said. "But Isaiah is a tough kid. He's going to bounce back. We're all there to support him and pick him up.
"He has plenty of confidence. He can take it away from his bullpens or his previous outings, like against Kentucky and all that. I mean he's got the stuff. It's just a matter of when it all links up and it's all there."
Hot slide
Center fielder Dominic Fletcher upended LSU's Cole Freeman on a clean slide at second base in the SEC Tournament championship game last year. The fact that it was a clean play and Fletcher had the right to a path to second base didn't matter to LSU fans, who booed him on his final two plate appearances in the Tigers' 4-2 victory.
"I just was going in hard, and the third baseman kind of pulled the second baseman up into the baseline a little bit," Fletcher said. "Just kind of a few words back and forth, and then I came up the next two at-bats and got booed by all their fans.
"I mean, I don't think it was really too big a deal. It was a clean play. I know that. They know that. It'll be interesting to see how their fans treat me when we get down there."
Dave Van Horn said he had pretty well forgotten about the play until asked about it Wednesday.
"I don't know what the big deal was about it myself," Van Horn said. "The defender got in the way, in the baseline. It showed on the video.
"The fans didn't know exactly what happened, but if they would've taken a step back and watched what happened, the throw brought him into the line. There he was, and he just slid into the base and hit him. [Fletcher] didn't do anything, you know, that you're not supposed to do.
"I work with the infielders here and I teach these guys how to defend themselves, and the first line of defense is to get out of the baseline. You know there's footwork for that."
Sports on 05/03/2018