PEA RIDGE — The University of Arkansas baseball team has won their first two games in the College World Series, something they haven’t done in more than 30 years.
The South Carolina baseball coach Ray Tanner made a statement earlier in the season that he thought that the Razorbacks had a chance to win the NCAA championships this season. It sounded kind of odd at the time since his Gamecocks had just taken two of three from the Hogs on Arkansas home turf. South Carolina then went on to win the SEC title while the Razorbacks ended the 2012 SEC season with a losing record.
What Tanner knew and what most folks are just now realizing is that beginning this season, collegiate baseball championships will have to be won through speed and pitching. This season is the year that the NCAA mandated bat changes, moving to deaden college baseball’s aluminum bats. The change has led to a precipitous drop in the number of home runs this season as well as extra base hits and batting averages.
Until last year, all NCAA baseball championships had been held at the old Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Neb., a place known for short fences and a place where the wind often blew out, as it sat on top of a hill. In 2011, a new stadium was built downtown with deeper fences and less wind, and coupled with deader bats, less runsscored. A lot of baseball scores in the old days of Rosenblatt could have been mistaken for football scores.
Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn, in recognition of what the NCAA was planning to do to baseball, has been loading up on pitchers and fast players to adjust to what would be the playing conditions this year. He has done a masterful job as the team is 2-0 with only four pitchers called on as Arkansas whipped Kent State 8-1 in the opener then edged two time defending national champion South Carolina 2-1 Monday night. Arkansas broke the Gamecocks 25 game winning streak in NCAA playoff games, breaking Texas’ record of 15 straight some time ago.
Arkansas will now play the winner of Kent State/ South Carolina today after Kent State eliminated No.
1 nationally ranked Florida 5-4 Monday afternoon. If Arkansas wins today, they will move on to a three game championship series, most likely against Arizona. Should Kent State or South Carolina come back to beat the Hogs, there will be a playoff game later today to settle the issue.
An interesting note on the game Monday related to Arkansas sophomore pitcher Ryan Stanek. It was revealed on ESPN that Stanek had been coming to the College World Series every year since he was 8 years old to watch the college baseball extravaganza. The only time he has missed since then was last year when he was a freshman pitcher of an Arkansas team that didn’t make it in.
Monday he was finally in a World Series game which saw him garner the MVP player award as he posted the win and held hot hittingSouth Carolina to a mere 3 hits.
At one time this year, Arkansas was ranked No.
3 in the nation, but that was before the SEC season started. The super strong SEC makes it hard for any team to pile up a lot of victories. The Gamecocks had the best outcome, compiling an 18-12 record in conference games. Records of 18-12 won’t win too many conference championships in other places, but most of the teams in the SEC were ranked in the nation’s top 25 at one time or another this year.
I don’t think it was just an accident that all three of the SEC College World Series teams wound up in the same half of the bracket. Last year, Florida and South Carolina made it an All-SEC final, just like it was in the NCAA football championship gamewhen LSU played Alabama.
There is talk of the NCAA making rules that would prevent football teams from the same conference from playing in a national championship game.
Alabama just won the Women’s Softball World Series, and SEC team dominated track and field as well as golf this year as they usually do. As a matter of fact, except for wrestling, lacrosse and, maybe, shuffleboard, the SEC dominates just about everything in the sporting arena. With powerful schools like Texas A & M and Missouri joining the league next year, it will only get stronger.
Speaking of Missouri, it seems that the Tigers are to be named Arkansas’ permanent rival in future football games as they were assigned the Eastern Division in football. While they will play most of the other eastern teams on a rotating basis year to year, we will always get to play our neighbor to the north.
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Editor’s note: John McGee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at prtnews@ nwaonline.com.
Sports, Pages 9 on 06/20/2012