Dave Van Horn explains why Kentucky pitcher Mason Moore had success vs. Arkansas

Head coach Dave Van Horn watched as his Arkansas Razorbacks team came up short in the rubber match against the Kentucky Wildcats on Sunday. With that, Arkansas lost its first series since early April.

A massive reason why Arkansas came up short against Kentucky was the performance of Kentucky pitcher Mason Moore. After the game, Dave Van Horn broke down his performance, explaining why he was able to have success against Arkansas.

“Well, he had a lot of strikes,” Dave Van Horn said. “He had movement, he had sink, and we knew that. Needed to get his pitches up, stay off the low stuff.”

It was the fifth inning before Mason Moore gave up a hit to Arkansas during Sunday’s game. At that point, the Razorbacks were able to get to him for a couple of runs and run him out of the game, but after he dominated the first four innings, Arkansas was already trying to come from behind, which they weren’t able to.

Dave Van Horn emphasized that the goal against Mason Moore was to get the ball because he throws a lot of pitches with sinking movement. However, Arkansas wasn’t able to do that well enough.

“Fastball had some sink. Threw a lot of change-ups. They have sink,” Van Horn said. “So, you had to see the ball up, and when we did that we made him pitch. We got him to throw more pitches, but he never really gave up a big hit, and credit to him.”

In the end, Arkansas lost the game 7-4. With that, Arkansas fell to 17-7 in SEC play and 40-9 overall.

Dave Van Horn says Arkansas didn’t deserve to win the series

Following the series loss to Kentucky, Dave Van Horn explained that he didn’t believe that Arkansas deserved to win the series.

“No excuses,” Van Horn said.

“We’ve played a lot of games in the last four weeks. Done pretty well. None of our midweek games have been against easy teams. We’ve had to play hard and pitch hard. It’s tough losing the series, especially on the road like this. We felt like if we could’ve just swung the bats a little bit better. But we didn’t deserve to win this series honestly.”

Arkansas will have a chance to bounce back over the weekend. That’s when Arkansas is going to have a three-game series against the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Again, it’s going to be a key SEC series late in the season.