When a final score looks like something you’d find on the scoreboard at Razorback Stadium instead of Baum-Walker Stadium there’s a problem that goes well beyond a bad pitching day.
Georgia 26, Arkansas 14.
Go ahead and read it again. That’s not a spread. That’s not a point total.
That’s a baseball score — the worst one the Hogs have ever absorbed at home, by the way — and it happened in broad daylight against the fifth-ranked team in the country.
The north wind howling straight out to center field and an Arkansas defense that couldn’t seem to get out of its own way just made the snowball get bigger running downhill.
Dave Van Horn has been around this game for a long time. He didn’t dress it up.
“That was one in a thousand there,” he said. “I haven’t been a part of too many like that either way, on the good side or the bad side now.”
That’s a coach telling you Saturday was a day he’d like to set on fire and never think about again.
Defense Made a Bad Day Worse
Before we even talk about the nine home runs Georgia hit — and we’ll get there, trust me — let’s start with the six errors Arkansas committed. Six.
In one game. Against a conference opponent.
Those six errors produced six unearned runs. That’s the most errors the Razorbacks have committed against a conference foe since May 21, 2015, against LSU at the SEC Tournament.
Second baseman Nolan Souza and shortstop Camden Kozeal each made two of them.
First baseman Carter Rutenbar, filling in for the injured Reese Robinett, had one at a moment that genuinely stung when he couldn’t squeeze a throw from Kozeal in the fifth inning that would’ve gotten Georgia’s Kolby Branch out, keeping a rally alive at a point where Arkansas was still close enough to believe in itself.
Catcher Ryder Helfrick was assessed an interference error in the eighth. By that point the Hogs trailed 15-11, and the errors were piling up as fast as the runs.
Van Horn didn’t look for excuses.
“I’m just disappointed with defensively how we played,” he said.
That’s a direct assessment of an afternoon where the Razorbacks’ defense turned manageable situations into bad ones and bad ones into disasters.
It Started with Enough Promise
Here’s the part that’ll really sting for Arkansas fans — the Hogs actually led this thing 6-1 after two innings.
Starter Parker Coil helped build that cushion. Souza and Maika Niu each drove in runs in the first inning and Kozeal followed with a 387-foot home run to right in the second to stretch the lead. It looked like Arkansas might control the tempo.
Then the third inning happened.
Georgia catcher Daniel Jackson hit a 3-run homer 388 feet to right-center against Coil to cut the lead to 6-4.
Ryan Wynn then greeted reliever Gabe Gaeckle with a 441-foot blast off the batter’s eye to tie it at 6-6.
Brennan Hudson followed with a 339-foot shot to right to put Georgia ahead 7-6 — three consecutive home runs and a lead Arkansas had built was completely gone.
The Razorbacks answered. Helfrick crushed a 3-run homer 424 feet to left in the fourth to tie the game at 9-9, and for a moment it felt like a real SEC baseball game again.
It wasn’t going to stay that way.
Seven Pitchers. Eight Homers Allowed. One Rough Afternoon.
Seven Arkansas pitchers took the mound Saturday. Six of them gave up at least one home run.
The only one who didn’t was Carson Brumbaugh, who came on in the ninth after Georgia had already built a 15-run lead.
That tells you most of what you need to know about the pitching side of this afternoon.
Coil allowed five runs. Gaeckle gave up four, just two of them earned. Colin Fisher allowed four, also two earned.
Steele Eaves allowed one. Mark Brissey gave up four and three of them were earned. Then there was Peyton Lee.
Lee, a freshman who’d never pitched in an SEC game before Saturday, was handed the ball in the ninth with Georgia leading 15-11 and the Bulldogs locked in.
What followed was the kind of outing a young pitcher has nightmares about.
He allowed eight runs — seven earned — on six hits and a hit batsman, and he recorded just one out across 32 pitches. All 11 Georgia runs in the inning scored before Arkansas got the second out.
“I feel bad for those young guys pitching,” Van Horn said, “but at the same time, it’s a learning experience. Let’s just put it that way.”
It’s a fair thing to say. It’s also the kind of learning experience you’d rather have in a non-conference game in February.
Jackson Took the Record Book Apart
While the Arkansas side of this story is difficult to watch, it’s worth acknowledging what Georgia’s Daniel Jackson did Saturday, because it was genuinely exceptional.
Jackson homered three times. His first came in the opening inning off Coil — a solo shot that started the whole sequence.
His second was that 3-run blast in the third that ignited Georgia’s comeback. And his third came to lead off the seventh, a shot that gave him sole possession of the Bulldogs’ single-game home run record for a player.
Jackson wasn’t the only one doing damage. Michael O’Shaughnessy hit two home runs in the ninth inning alone.
The first was a 2-run shot 412 feet to right-center against Brissey and then a 393-foot grand slam to right against Lee. Wynn and Hudson each hit two in the game as well.
Nine home runs total for Georgia, tying the stadium record for homers in a single game at the 30-year-old ballpark.
The Ninth Was When It Became History
Going into the ninth inning, this was a difficult game for Arkansas — but it wasn’t yet a historically bad one. The Razorbacks trailed 15-11.
Brumbaugh was coming in. There was some dignity left.
Georgia took it. All 11 runs scored before the second out was recorded. The final score ballooned to 26-14 and set the record for most runs allowed at a Razorback home venue.
The previous record for runs by a visiting team in Fayetteville had stood since 1948, when Oklahoma State won 25-8 in just the second year after Arkansas restarted its program following a 17-year break.
That record lasted nearly 80 years. It’s gone now.
The 26 runs were also the second-most ever allowed by an Arkansas team, trailing only a 27-6 loss to LSU in Baton Rouge back in 1998.
What’s Next for the Razorbacks
The loss pushes the Razorbacks to 26-15 overall and 9-9 in SEC play heading into the final stretch of the regular season.
Arkansas’ ERA jumped 40 points to 4.41 on the back of 20 earned runs allowed. Georgia, meanwhile, sits at 32-9 and 13-5 in league play, maintaining its lead in the conference standings.
There’s no long break to shake this one off. Arkansas is scheduled to host Missouri State on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in a rematch the Hogs will want to approach carefully.
Missouri State beat them 15-14 in 10 innings back on March 31 in Springfield. That’s not a comfortable opponent to face coming off an afternoon like this one.
This program has been in tough spots before and found its way out. Van Horn’s teams know how to respond.
But you don’t shake off a 26-14 loss at home with a day off and a pep talk. You’ve got to go prove something Tuesday and carry it forward from there.
“One in a thousand,” Van Horn said.
A lot of fans are hoping he’s right about that.
