Dave Van Horn proud of Arkansas for strong season despite disappointing end

One of the surprises of Regional play for the NCAA tournament was the SEC Co-champions, the Arkansas Razorbacks, getting eliminated from the tournament as a host team. The TCU Horned Frogs throttled Arkansas in both matchups, winning their first contest 20-5 and 12-4 in the final game closeout game to advance to a Super Regional. After being eliminated from the College World Series, Razorbacks skipper Dave Van Horn gave his thoughts on their season.

“I’m proud of just the whole season. 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,” said Van Horn. “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.”

With all the talent in the SEC and in the West division in particular, Arkansas was not considered a favorite to win their division or even compete for the conference regular season crown. But the Razorbacks stunned everyone outside of Fayetteville, beating LSU, Texas A&M, Auburn, and Alabama on multiple occasions. Arkansas finished the season 43-18 while going 20-10 in conference play.

Unfortunately for Van Horn and his squad, TCU just had Arkansas number. In the three times the two clubs faced off, once in the regular season and the two times in the regional round, the Horned Frogs have at least tripled the Razorbacks’ score. This year Arkansas just could not figure out how to cool down the TCU bats whenever they played.

Van Horn congratulates TCU following elimination in Regionals

Van Horn recognized TCU as the better team over the weekend and give props to the Horned Frogs following their Monday loss.

“Really the first thing I want to congratulate TCU man, they were a wrecking crew man, they were really good this weekend,” Van Horn said. “We knew and we saw they were coming to us but we were getting into if everything we had heard and I mean it was true that were really hot and they were really tough to beat, and we’d already seen them obviously. But whatever was going on in the middle of the season, they fixed it, they’re awfully good.”