FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas baseball has hosted a regional in six of the last seven seasons. Given the program's track record, there's a good chance the Hogs will be back inside Baum-Walker Stadium next June when the 2025 postseason begins.
So for the next 12 months, there needs to be one singular focus in the program. How do the Razorbacks right the wrongs of the past two NCAA Tournaments and make sure regular season success translates to the postseason?
The Arkansas season came to a stunning end Sunday afternoon, falling to Southeast Missouri State 6-3 in the losers bracket of the Fayetteville Regional. The Razorbacks closed the 2024 season by losing nine of their final 13 games, didn't make the championship of their own regional and dropped back-to-back home games for the first time since 2022.
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And the disappointment comes on the heels of a similar result in 2023 when TCU steamrolled Arkansas twice in the Fayetteville Regional and sent the Hogs crashing out of the postseason.
That's back-to-back years where Dave Van Horn and his players' season ended much earlier than they had hoped. For most of the spring, Arkansas was one of the top-three ranked teams in the country, but it couldn't get a chance to compete with the final 16 squads at the super regionals.
Sum it all up, and Arkansas baseball has a postseason problem.
"I think about it every day. It’s just the way it is. It’s the way it is these days," Van Horn said following Sunday's loss to SEMO.
No active coach has more postseason wins than Van Horn, which makes the lack of a national championship trophy inside the Hunt Development Center all the more agonizing.
This year's team had one of the best pitching staffs in the country through the first two months of the season, but the arms faltered down the stretch. An average SEC offense would have made the regression tolerable, but this was one of the worst lineups in the SEC that could never sustain its rare moments of consistency.
And the offensive struggles keep popping up at the worst possible time. In their last seven postseason-ending losses dating back to 2017, Arkansas is averaging 2.1 runs per game.
Fixing the lineup is the top priority this offseason. Many fans are frustrated with hitting coach Nate Thompson. Van Horn indicated Sunday that he's happy with the coaching staff, but there need to be changes in philosophy.
"(Thompson) really tries to train a swing. He does a great job. Nobody works harder than him at it," Van Horn said. "You can always make adjustments, and a lot of times I think what you're talking about is maybe a little bit more of an approach. Really in my opinion, that's always important to do that. But we've got to get a little better athlete."
Under Thompson, Arkansas has embraced the modern-day approach to offense: Swing for home runs, draw walks and avoid small ball. The Hogs ranked eighth in sacrifice bunts and 10th in stolen bases among the 14 SEC teams this year.
The problem with that mindset in 2024 was the disappearance of the long ball. Arkansas hit 87 home runs, which ranked eighth in the SEC and 61st in the country. Conference rivals Tennessee, Texas A&M, Florida and Georgia all launched more than 124 homers.
Arkansas can't just hope it improves in the power department moving forward. The approach to scoring runs must be diversified.
"We've got to get a little better athlete," Van Horn said Sunday. "We can't just have eight guys that hit homers. I like guys that hit doubles and I like guys that hit homers, but you've got to have some guys that can run, too. You've got to be able to create some offense the days the winds blowing in or they're really good on the mound and you can you're having trouble making contact."
Van Horn and Thompson will have a relatively blank canvas to enact such changes. The only starter from this year's lineup projected to return in 2025 is shortstop Wehiwa Aloy. The other seven positions are up for grabs.
Arkansas will once again be active in the transfer portal, and the Hogs will hope their high school recruiting class doesn't get decimated in the MLB Draft like it did last summer. The pitching staff will lose Hagen Smith, which is a huge blow, but the potential emergence of prized freshmen Gabe Gaeckle and Hunter Dietz in the starting rotation could make that loss a little less painful.
It's going to be another long summer for the Razorbacks. The postseason narrative was only amplified this weekend.
Van Horn has a year to make sure the same questions don't persist in 2025.
