Arkansas baseball coach Dave Van Horn returned to Auburn, Ala., on Saturday morning to coach the Razorbacks’ series finale at Auburn.
The No. 1 Razorbacks lost 8-6 to the 24th-ranked Tigers to snap a 15-game winning streak.
Speaking on the Razorback Sports Network pregame show, Van Horn reflected on an eventful day Friday when he flew back to Fayetteville where his oldest daughter delivered triplets. Van Horn did not coach Arkansas’ 6-5 series-clinching victory over the Tigers on Friday night.
“It was a great day. It was a wild one,” Van Horn said. “I got up in the morning and got a text that said, ‘They’re going to take the babies today.’
“I thought I had a couple or three more days, but there’s always things going on in there and they felt like it was time to go and get in there. I got back and I was just so glad I could be there. Last night we got to go look at them and my daughter’s first time to see them I was in there, so I got to really watch her. It was a special moment. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
During an in-game interview with SEC Network+ on Saturday, Van Horn said the babies were born at 29 weeks.
“They tried to come two weeks ago, so we feel good that we got them to 29,” Van Horn said. “They’re all healthy. We’re just going to watch them grow over the next month, two months and bring them home and have a little fun.”
Van Horn spoke to players and coaches before they boarded the team bus from their hotel Saturday morning. In a clip posted to Arkansas’ social media accounts, Van Horn reflected on watching Friday’s game from afar.
“I’m just super proud,” Van Horn said. “You guys came across as, first off, very motivated. The announcers made a lot of nice comments, and I could see it. The coaches did a tremendous job of managing the game. All the moves they made, you guys backed them up and did a great job of whatever your role was, which was great to see. The effort that came across the screen, just the team itself in the dugout — man, it was fun. I was proud.”
On the RSN pregame show, Van Horn singled out the job of pitching coach Matt Hobbs, who served as acting head coach in his absence.
“Matt did a great job and had a lot of pitching decisions to make and had to pinch hit and do a few things,” said Van Horn, who added, “Yesterday’s game was a total team effort. It wasn’t dominating pitching, wasn’t dominating hitting. It was just a bunch of guys chipping away, making plays — hit the cut-off man, make a diving play, diving and tagging the bag.
“They just kept hanging around. They didn’t let [Auburn] get ahead of them too far because Auburn could have pulled away. You can see the momentum slowly switching a little bit. The thought always creeps in your head when you’re not winning and things aren’t going your way, you don’t know if you can win. Our guys felt like they were going to win.”
Of freshman catcher Ryder Helfrick’s go-ahead home run in the ninth inning, Van Horn told the team, “Ryder hit one to tomorrow. It probably landed about now. Right when it left the bat I said, ‘That’s gone!’ I’ve seen a few of them. It was way gone and it was really cool.”
Helfrick’s home run was measured 405 feet, but Van Horn echoed Hobbs’ thoughts from the night before when he said looked like it went farther.
“It looked on TV like he hit it 500 feet,” Van Horn told RSN.