Dave Van Horn discusses how this Arkansas team should be remembered

Dave Van Horn has no qualms with how he believes the 2023 Arkansas baseball squad should be remembered, and that’s more than fondly.

While the Razorbacks ended up falling short in their Regional showdown against the TCU Horned Frogs, Van Horn is satisfied with a season that saw Arkansas win 43 games and capture an SEC title. Through all the turmoil they went through injury-wise, that’s pretty dang good.

“Well you know, I don’t like to use the term overachievers or anything like that, because I think they’re good players. This is a team, and I’ve said it many times, they show up and they think they’re going to win. They showed up and played hard for us all the time. I really can’t remember having to really talk to the team about what we were seeing. It’s not a good effort, you’re not playing with enough heart. Never really saw that from this team. Just find a way to win,” explained the Razorbacks skipper. “They would find a way to win, and they were fun to be around. Honestly. And I’ll talk to them about that in our meeting when we finish up in a day and a half or so, but I think what they’re going to be remembered for is they won the SEC Championship. They won 43 games. They had like what, one guy on the All-SEC team? It’s very rare. You win the SEC Championship, and you look at Florida, what’d they have, five? Couple of second teamers. I mean, it was something else.

“So just a bunch of guys that played as a team, and they won a championship. You know, I hope they get celebrated in ten years. When they come back and you know, I bet they’re all doing something pretty good.”

Continuing, it’s more than evident Van Horn is taking a ton of pride in Arkansas’ performance over this past season, as he waxed poetic over how proud he is over the Razorbacks’ performance.

“I’m proud of just the whole season,” added Van Horn. “Winning the western division, beating out LSU and A&M, and some of these guys that have all these players this year; I’m just so proud of our players. And then, you know, tying in Florida for the overall SEC championship. Yeah, we’ve only got three of those in my 21 years. Those trophies are hard to get.

“Super proud of the guys. So, who we have in that locker room that’s not on the DL all year, I think that we did all we could do, honestly.”

The ultimate goal is winning the College World Series, and Dave Van Horn may bring Arkansas there one day, but for now he’ll bask in satisfaction for a couple of days until getting back on the horse for 2024.