Dave Van Horn addresses challenge of facing SEC baseball schedule

Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Dave Van Horn has plenty of SEC baseball experience. After all, he’s coached in the conference for more than two decades now. Still, while that experience helps, it doesn’t inherently make the schedule easy to navigate.

Ahead of the season, Van Horn addressed just how challenging the SEC is to compete in and what his approach is going to be.

“We figured it out the other day,” Dave Van Horn said. “I think our 30 conference games 27 of those games are ranked right now. You never know how it’s going to turn out or who’s going to do what down the road.”

In D1Baseball’s preseason Top 25 Poll, the SEC has nine ranked teams, including six in the Top 10. That includes Arkansas, who is ranked fifth in that ranking. That’s probably not a surprise given that the last five College World Series champions came from the SEC and three of the last five runner-ups come from the SEC. A fourth runner-up, Oklahoma, was in the Big 12 at the time but is now in the SEC as well.

“But if you look at some teams that maybe lost a lot of players that were really good last year,” Van Horn said. “We don’t play them this year. They’re not on our schedule, some of them. We’re playing some older teams, some really good teams. Got some tough road games — at LSU, at Florida, just to name a few. Yeah, it’s, you know, we play Washington State. So, I’m going to worry about that right now and just try to get better.”

Since Dave Van Horn got to Arkansas, the Razorbacks have consistently been one of the best teams in the SEC. That’s included taking Arkansas to the College World Series on seven different occasions. To go along with that, he’s either finished first or tied for first in the SEC West on eight occasions. He also won the SEC Tournament as recently as 2021. Navigating the difficult SEC schedule is something Van Horn has done before and is capable of doing again at Arkansas.

Before the SEC slate begins, the focus will be on starting the season on the right foot. For Arkansas, that means being ready for Friday, February 14th when they open the season at home against Washington State. The SEC schedule will come later. The Razorbacks’ first conference game is scheduled for March 14th, a month later, on the road against Ole Miss.