Arkansas’ getting to Super Regional experience before played a big role in getting there for the second time with Sunday’s 7-3 win.
Razorbacks beat Cardinal to advance to Super Regional
Arkansas advanced to super regionals for the second time in program history by defeated Stanford, 7-3, in the Regional final Sunday evening.
The Razorbacks (42-9) will host their first home super regional in program history next weekend against either Arizona or Ole Miss.
How it happened
Outfielder Hannah McEwen walked to lead off the game, setting up infielder Braxton Burnside to jolt her 25th home run of the season to dead center, giving the Hogs a 2-0 lead.
Stanford responded immediately in the bottom of the frame and took advantage of an error to put runners on first and second with one out.
Emily Young singled off pitcher Autumn Storms’ leg and the ricochet allowed one run to score. Emily Schultz blooped a double to left to tie the game, and the Cardinal went ahead 3-2 on Sydnee Huff’s single to center, but Ryan Jackson cut a run down at the plate with an on-target throw.
The Razorbacks scored five unanswered runs in the fourth and fifth to close out the game. Outfielder Ryan Jackson singled in a run and infielder Keely Huffine drove another home on a fielder’s choice in the fourth to go up, 4-3.
Designated player Linnie Malkin gave the Hogs some cushion in the fifth, hammering a three-run home run to center, her 18th of the season, to go up 7-3.
Storms went 1.0 inning inside the circle, before Mary Haff (26-6) entered from the bullpen and did not allow a run in 6.0 innings. She allowed just five hits with three strikeouts.
Both teams collected nine hits and infielder Hannah Gammill led the team with two hits.
Up next
Arkansas awaits the winner of the Tucson Regional and will play at Bogle Park next weekend against an opponent and times to be determined.
Haff was ready to go in all day, but came into game against Stanford early
Hogs pitcher Mary Haff said she was prepared to pitch in relief today, but when Autumn Storms was injured it got her into game earlier than expected.
Hogs not taking foot off gas heading to SEC Tournament next week
A letdown for Arkansas on Saturday would have just gotten a shrug from most fans, but it turned into a full-blown Baum-Walker party.
The Razorbacks, after clinching the SEC regular season title Friday night, proceeded to stomp Florida into submission, 9-3, to complete a sweep of the final series.
“We’re not going backwards,” was what Dave Van Horn said later about the Hogs peaking at the right time.
Now it’s on to Hoover for a completely meaningless SEC Tournament. The Hogs will probably be the No. 1 overall seed for the NCAA Tournament regardless of what happens next week.
This time Brady Slavens’ bat came up big. He hammered a pair of home runs for five RBI. The rest of the runs were scattered and Charlie Welch delivered … again. His pinch-hit double in a wild seventh inning broke open a close game.
And let the party get started in front of another full house that really got rolling when the outcome became obvious in the seventh inning. Nobody was going home early.
Part of that is a year without much fan involvement in games due to the covid restrictions.
Maybe the biggest part of, though, is this Razorback team resembles a machine not even running at full throttle headed into the final part.
This team is different.
“That’s the way this team is,” Van Horn said with a big smile. “It’s their personality. I’ve said it the last two months. When these guys step on the field they want to win.”
There really wasn’t any particular reason to push it Saturday. The league title had been secured Friday night. With the exception of some pitchers who weren’t even active for Saturday’s game, everybody else played like nothing had been decided.
“There were no motivation speeches about playing hard and let’s go ahead and win this,” Van Horn said. “It’s the little things. We just talked about how to beat those guys over there. We just showed up and got after ’em.”
It’s the one game at a time approach we’ve talked about this weekend because there is a bigger goal than every one of these games. They keep getting better.
“You get better until you get tired,” Van Horn said.
Which may offer some clues into the real mastery of what Van Horn does.
“I don’t think we’re tired,” he said.
For Razorback fans, that’s a big cause for hope to get to Omaha and win it all.
Right now they look like it’s a real possibility.
Van Horn on Hogs’ peaking: ‘We’re not going backwards’
After the Hogs wrapped up the regular season with a sweep of Florida, Dave Van Horn didn’t say they’ve peaked but “not going backwards.”
Slavens after blasting pair of homers in finale against Florida
Brady Slaves (2-for-4, 2 homers, 5 RBI) talked about his big day at the plate in Arkansas’ 9-3 win over the Gators to complete sweep of series.
Second straight shutout pushes Razorbacks into regional final
• Hogs coach Courtney Deifel after game
• Hogs pitcher Mary Haff after win
For the second straight game, No. 6 Arkansas recorded a shutout by downing South Dakota State, 4-0, in the winner’s bracket final at Bogle Park on Saturday afternoon to advance to the Fayetteville Regional Championship.
The Razorbacks are looking to win their second regional in program history, and their first since 2018.
How it happened
After recording two hits yesterday, designated player Linnie Malkin continued her hot start to the postseason, rocketing a two-run homer to left in the top of the second for her 17th bomb of the season to give Arkansas a 2-0 lead.
The Hogs added two more insurance runs in the top of the fourth to extend their lead to 4-0 on catcher Kayla Green’s RBI double to the right centerfield wall and outfielder Aly Manzo’s base hit that caromed off the first base bag.
Pitcher Mary Haff (25-6) was unblemished in 6.0 innings, allowing four hits and one walk with seven strikeouts. She has not allowed a run in 11.0 NCAA Tournament innings this year.
Autumn Storms worked the final frame and allowed three hits while striking out one.
Grace Glanzer (19-5) went the distance for SDSU, yielding four runs on six hits and three walks with four strikeouts.
The Jackrabbits were shutout for the first time all season and outhit Arkansas, 7-6.
Playing as the home team, SDSU brought the game’s tying run to the plate in the bottom of the seventh after recording three infield singles but struck out to end the game.
Malkin’s 17th homer of the year ties her for second-most in a single season in school history with Nicole Schroeder (2017). Infielder Braxton Burnside’s 24 bombs this year rank first.
Up next
Arkansas needs to win one game to claim a regional championship and advance to the super regional round of the NCAA Tournament.
The Razorbacks will face an opponent to be determined on Sunday at 3 p.m.
Deifel after shutting out South Dakota State, advancing to final
Hogs softball coach Courtney Deifel talked to the media after a 4-0 win over the Jackrabbits, moving to Sunday’s regional final.
Haff recapping shutout win over South Dakota State to advance in NCAA
Hogs’ pitcher Mary Haff scattered four hits and didn’t give up a run in a 4-0 win over the Jackrabbits to reach the Regional final Sunday.
Hogs get 4-3 walk-off winner from Welch to wrap up title
Kevin Kopps hit his first batter of the season and got a strikeout, then a pitch-hitter delivered the game-winning hit and Arkansas’ 4-3 win Friday night clinched the SEC season championship.
Considering a rain delay of 1:45, that really was about the only way the Razorbacks could wrap up their first outright regular-season title.
“What an accomplishment by this team,” Dave Van Horn said later.
The Hogs got the outright title by winning after Tennessee lost to South Carolina. Kopps closed out a game where Caleb Bolden started and lasted long enough to give them a chance.
After Robert Moore homered to tie the game 3-3 in the eighth, Casey Opitz got a double to center, then ended up at third on an error.
Enter Charlie Welch, a pinch-hitter this year that is hitting something like a ridiculous .500. He took a 3-2 pitch deep into the gap in right-center that was going to score Opitz whether it was caught or not (it wasn’t).
And a raucous Baum-Walker full house of 11,084 (there were more) let loose a year full of emotions built up by cancelling last season and covid restrictions to start this year.
“We hadn’t experienced what we had tonight and last night since 2019,” Van Horn said.
Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan commented to Van Horn before the game about the strong crowd at Friday night’s game.
“I said ‘you’re probably going to get more of it tonight and probably more,'” Van Horn said. “They were.”
Arkansas clinched the series by coming back from an early three-run deficit, which is nothing really new. They’ve been down that bad a dozen times before this year.
“It seems like we were behind a lot, maybe 75 percent of the time,” Van Horn said. ‘When the other team scores first it doesn’t seem to faze us too much.”
The Razorbacks also clinched their 10th series win of the season. They haven’t lost a single SEC series, something only Vanderbilt did in 2013.
“They’re really hard to get,” Van Horn said of series wins. “So many things have to happen over a 30-game season to have that opportunity. We’ve just played really well every weekend … some better than others, but always just enough. We put together some really good ball games to clinch series.”
Winning all of them in one year is harder.
“It’s very hard to do,” Van Horn said. “You don’t expect it. You just expect that maybe one weekend’s not going to go your way. We always talk to our guys in the fall about league play and how tough it is.
“The new guys, they probably don’t believe it until they see it. The older guys try to tell them that it’s a grind and it’s hard to win.”
Van Horn is taking it just one game at a time. He’s made that clear all season and is probably going to keep it until there’s not another game to play.
“One more game and we can move on to the tournament,” he said Friday night.
You may want to have a roster handy for Saturday’s game that starts at 2 p.m. because Van Horn said there will be some new faces for that game that means basically nothing and Jaxon Wiggins will get the start.
That wasn’t the plan.
“The plan was the start [Lyle] Lockhart tomorrow,” Van Horn said. “See, I gave you some good info there.”
Then he laughed and in case you’re wondering that doesn’t happen often at one of his press conferences, especially after the middle game of an SEC series.
Don’t worry, it probably won’t last long. There’s a bigger goal for this season.
Achieving THAT goal will require another trip to Omaha, though.
Van Horn says changes in lineup possible for series finale after 4-3 win
The Hogs clinched the SEC regular season championship on a walk-off and Dave Van Horn said lineup changes could be in place Saturday.
