Tye & Tommy on the new Hog FB hire, looking ahead to the CFB season, plus a pregnancy question
Loggains returning to Arkansas to coach tight ends for Pittman
Sam Pittman apparently has nailed down the open spot on his coaching staff with multiple reports that former walk-on Dowell Loggains will be the new tight ends coach.
Loggains was a walk-on from Abilene, Texas, Cooper under Houston Nutt and proved to be an effective practice quarterback because of his knowledge of the Razorbacks’ offense.
He played in 27 games in 2003-04 primarily as the holder on extra points and field goals.
Loggains started and NFL coaching career in 2008-09 with Tennessee and was offensive coordinator for the Titans and at Chicago, Miami and the New York Jets. He was also quarterbacks coach for the Titans, Browns, Bears and Jets.
After the entire coaching staff with the Jets was canned, he spent last season as an offensive analyst at Penn State.
The opening was created with offensive line coach Brad Davis bailed out to go to LSU over a week ago and Pittman moved tight ends coach Cody Kennedy to that spot.
The shuffling on the staff started when wide receivers coach Justin Stepp returned to his native South Carolina. Davis was hired in his hometown in Baton Rouge.
Loggains is back at Arkansas and won’t be going to an alma mater out of state.
Knox will need to step up for Hogs after Woods’ departure for Oklahoma
With Mike Woods moving on to Oklahoma, Saturday Down South’s Connor O’Gara thinks Trey Knox needs to play to potential for Hogs.
Murphy on Hogs’ season of destiny turning to season of disaster
Democrat-Gazette writer Tom Murphy talked about Sunday’s crashing end to a season that won’t be ending in Omaha after loss to NC State.
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast – Heartbreak Hogs
Tye, Tommy and callers react to the Game 3 loss last night
Don’t blame Kopps or Van Horn for lack of hits when Hogs needed them
Dave Van Horn made the right decision starting Kevin Kopps who held up his end of things but Arkansas couldn’t get hits at the right time and won’t be in Omaha.
North Carolina State won Sunday, 3-2, and they will be in the College World Series.
Some fans are looking to blame anybody. Others put the blame on Van Horn for starting Kopps and not having him available late.
“It didn’t go our way,” Dave Van Horn said later. “We didn’t get enough going offensively.”
Kopps was the best pitcher in all of college baseball. If nothing else, he’s shown his arm defies all logic the numbers nerds keep spouting about pitch counts and that sort of babble.
Counting his pitches is a waste of time because it doesn’t seem to matter.
“There’s not too many guys I would let pitch as much as I let him,” Van Horn said.
The Razorbacks’ coaching staff talked about whether to start him or bring him in early right after the 6-5 loss to NC State on Saturday.
Pitching coach Matt Hobbs put the choice to Kopps. He’d earned it with his performance this year.
“There’s not much difference between 114 pitches and 125 … it’s all the same,” Van Horn said. “Late in the game he was better than he was early in the game.”
Kopps, who spent about an hour after the game giving autographs and visiting with Hogs’ fans after the game, didn’t make any big mistakes, including the ninth-inning homer by Jose Torres.
“Torres went down and hit a good pitch and hit it a long way,” Van Horn said. “Gotta give him credit, sometimes the hitters just get you.”
The Hogs couldn’t just get to Wolfpack pitching and that proved to be the biggest problem in the series.
Elliott Avent probably won this series on Friday night when he just used half the game as an extended practice session for his team in a 21-2 loss.
Van Horn knew what Avent was doing. The Hogs weren’t going to see any of those pitchers the rest of the series.
On the other side, Van Horn didn’t have many options. He had started the only other pitcher he probably had a lot of confidence in Friday night when Patrick Wicklander started and lasted six innings.
The only consistent thing about this Arkansas pitching staff has been inconsistency. Kopps bailed out this staff in more games anybody would really want to count.
Starting Kopps was Van Horn’s best shot of getting to Omaha and it probably would have worked out if the Hogs suddenly ran into a pitching staff they couldn’t consistently hit.
All of that arrived at the worst possible moment for Razorback fans, many of whom were already making plans for Omaha. You never get too far ahead of things when it comes to sports because it can all come crashing down in one game.
In baseball that’s what happens when you don’t get hits at the right time.
Simply put, that’s what happened Sunday evening.
Van Horn says failure to produce at plate costs Hogs in Super Regional
Arkansas scattered just four hits against North Carolina State and missed a trip to Omaha after a 4-3 loss Sunday afternoon.
HOG REACTION: Hogs fall to NC State in deciding third game
Tye and Mason react to the Hogs being eliminated by NC State in Game 3 of the Fayetteville Super Regional.
Kopps on decision to start final of Super Regional against Wolfpack
Arkansas pitcher Kevin Kopps (8 innings, allowed 7 hits, struck out 9) started against North Carolina State and he wanted the start when offered.
Playing toughest schedule makes hill taller for Hogs’ improvement
Sam Pittman knew he was facing an uphill climb when he took over Arkansas’ lagging football fortunes.
Covid didn’t do him any favors and everybody has their own opinions on how that was handled.
Facing 10 SEC opponents allowed the sales pitch to Razorback fans to be it would have been a 6-6 season in a normal year. Hey, last season you could claim anything at the end and nobody was going to argue about it a lot.
This year will be different. But the schedule won’t be.
Brad Crawford of 247Sports.com said recently in a videocast with Chris Hummer the Hogs have the nation’s toughest schedule once again and it’s a pretty solid argument.
Most over-under projections for the Hogs are 4.5 wins this season. That’s about right for a team that has more questions than answers at this point.
“Getting there, they’re going to have to win the 50-50 games and then maybe getting to a bowl game they have to beat one of these nationally-ranked titans,” Crawford said.
He’s right. Getting two should be easy (Rice and UAPB). Georgia Southern may not be the pushover fans assume, but that should make it three wins looking at it in the summer.
For a team with the biggest question being the most important position on the field, it’s going to be how KJ Jefferson handles being the guy at quarterback for the Hogs.
It was Lou Holtz who told us in the preseason in 1978 to forget about the previous year’s 11-1 record and No. 3 national ranking after an Orange Bowl win over Oklahoma.
“Last year has nothing to do with this year,” he said.
Fans are pointing towards the Texas game because, well, it’s somehow a big deal and they think it’s a rivalry. It’s only a rivalry to Razorback fans, no matter how many times the talking heads in the media try to make a big deal.
They’ve read the history books. Of course those books usually don’t mention it’s never been a particularly big game for the Longhorns. They are STILL more interested in hating Texas A&M (a team they haven’t played since 2011 and have a 64.4% winning record against).
And Oklahoma has always been their biggest opponent. Texas has a 54.9% winning record against one of the winningest programs in college football history.
More importantly they just fired a dysfunctional coach that won 64% of his games, including a Sugar Bowl win over Georgia.
Steve Sarkisian inherited recruiting classes that averaged finishing in the top five in the 247Sports.com composite rankings and his first class was 15th.
Texas has better players than Arkansas. Unless they take it like the Horns did at the Texas Bowl in 2014 it could be a long evening.
That leaves eight SEC opponents for the Hogs to get three wins against to make it to a bowl game.
Don’t expect a prediction on how the season will go until sometime in August … and maybe not then. We don’t even know what we don’t know to ask about it yet.
Yes, Pittman has made strides in personnel and improving attitudes. So has Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss and Mike Leach at Mississippi State. Don’t expect things to fall apart in Baton Rouge or Tuscaloosa this year and Texas A&M is close to getting to that level.
Everybody in the SEC has made strides to get better and Alabama just picked up one of the best defensive players in the league in the transfer portal.
The improvements aren’t just at Arkansas.
But Pittman had to start farther behind than the others and the disparity is tough to overcome in the SEC.
Especially when you have to play the toughest schedule in the country every year.
The hill gets really large.
