Arkansas’ season is mercifully over, and not too many fans are going to spend the summer mourning it.
It was that kind of season and you could see it coming back sometime in March. About the only thing consistent was being wildly inconsistent.
The Razorbacks came into Sunday’s regional final already having beaten Northeastern on Sunday and needing a win over host Kansas just to stay alive.
Then they would have need to beat the Jayhawks again. It was a tall order, and the pitching staff made it nearly impossible to fill.
That’s before anyone can get around to asking who would even be available on the mound Monday if they had won.
Ryder Helfrick gave Arkansas an early lift with a solo home run to left in the bottom of the first, putting the Hogs in front 1-0 before the Jayhawks had settled in.
Damian Ruiz and Camden Kozeal pushed the lead to 4-0 in the second inning on back-to-back singles.
Maika Niu drove in another run in the third to stretch it to 5-0, and for a moment it looked like lefty Ethan McElvain might actually have enough breathing room to work with.
He didn’t.
Pitching carousel couldn’t stop Kansas surge
Kansas started chipping away in the fourth inning, and that’s when the wheels started coming off.
Dariel Osoria launched one to left to get the Jayhawks on the board. Singles from Jordan Bach and Dylan Schlotterback followed, and then Brady Ballinger singled to score another.
Cole Gibler came on to replace McElvain, but the damage wasn’t done. Max Soliz Jr. singled in a run, and then Tyson LeBlanc hit a two-run shot to center that flipped the scoreboard.
Kansas led 6-5 just like that, and a five-run cushion had evaporated in a matter of minutes.
Gibler stuck around into the fifth, but the sixth inning turned this game into something the Razorbacks couldn’t realistically climb back from.
LeBlanc doubled to lead things off, and after a wild pitch and a hit batter, Josh Dykhoff hit a three-run homer to right that pushed Kansas to 11-5. Manning West had come in to try and stop the bleeding, but he couldn’t do it either.
By the time Riane Ritter took over in the sixth, Helfrick’s two-run shot in the bottom half felt more like a footnote than a turning point.
Then came the eighth. Peyton Lee entered and promptly walked the bases loaded before James DeCremer took over.
DeCremer couldn’t find the strike zone either. Bach walked to force in a run, and then Cooper Dossett entered with the bases still jammed. A sacrifice fly from Schlotterback scored another, and Kansas had pushed it to 13-7 heading to the bottom of the eighth.
The Hogs used seven pitchers in total across the day — McElvain, Gibler, Fisher, Lee, DeCremer, Dossett, and Mark Brissey — and none of them could keep Kansas off the scoreboard long enough to really matter.
Late push wasn’t enough to change the story
Boede Rahe replaced Ritter to start the eighth, and Zack Stewart gave the Hogs something to cheer when he hit a two-run homer to center to make it 13-9.
But the comeback math never quite worked.
Niu hit a solo shot in the ninth to cut it to 13-10, but Brissey retired Kansas in order in the top half of the ninth, and the Arkansas lineup went down swinging to end it.
Christian Turner and TJ Pompey both struck out to close the book on the Razorbacks’ season.
It’s a finish that fits this year’s club.
Zack Stewart’s homer and Helfrick’s two home runs on the afternoon showed Arkansas can hit.
The lineup had its moments throughout the tournament, including a dramatic 10-9 win over Northeastern on Saturday where Reese Robinett went 3-for-5 with two home runs and four RBI while Nolan Souza chipped in a homer and five RBI.
But the pitching staff’s inability to strand runners or get through an inning clean has been a theme, and Sunday in Lawrence was one more chapter in that same book.
A season that’s hard to feel too bad about ending
Kansas advances to the program’s first-ever Super Regional, and there’s something fitting about that.
The Jayhawks played on their home field and made the most of it, getting contributions throughout the lineup to knock off a Razorbacks program that came in as the No. 2 seed in the regional.
Arkansas finished the season at 41-21, and while that record carries some respectability, the way this team went out giving up 13 runs in a regional final, watching the lead disappear inning by inning, cycling through arm after arm hoping somebody could get three outs is about as honest a summary of what this season’s been as anything else.
The Hogs showed they could hit. They also showed they couldn’t consistently prevent the other team from doing the same thing.
The offseason questions are going to start fast.
They always do when the calendar flips to June and the roster starts looking uncertain.
For now, Arkansas’ season ends in Lawrence, Kansas, where a team that couldn’t find enough pitching to finish what its offense started ran out of chances on a Sunday afternoon.
But, as I said earlier, no one’s probably really surprised this team didn’t make it to June despite the high expectations in February.
