By Otis Kirk

FAYETTEVILLE -- Arkansas and Grand Canyon will open up the Stillwater Regional on Friday at noon and televised on the SEC Network.

Arkansas (38-18) is the No. 2 seed in the regional with Grand Canyon (41-19) No. 3 seed. Host Oklahoma State (39-20) is the top seed and will face Missouri State (30-27) Friday evening at 6 p.m. The Razorbacks and Antelopes have met four times previously with Arkansas winning them all. The last meeting was in March, 2020, in the last games before the COVID shutdown. Arkansas won both games at Baum-Walker Stadium.

The Razorbacks appeared a lock to host a regional as recently as the middle of May. Arkansas won two of three at Auburn May 6-8 to move to 36-12 on the season and it was even thought they might be a national seed (Top 8) and be at home until the College World Series. However, then Arkansas dropped two of three at home against Vanderbilt, on the road at Alabama and then went 0-2 in the SEC Tournament. If there is a positive to losing two in a row in Hoover, Ala., it's the Hogs got some rest and able to practice as well as possibly fix whatever went wrong the last three weeks. Dave Van Horn is hoping the rest helped the team.

"You’d think it would," Van Horn said Monday. "I think we gave them two days off - Saturday and Sunday was an option to lift with the weight room open and available to them a couple of hours each day. If they didn’t want to come no big deal. Had a couple of guys hitting in our indoor facility when I’ve been around, just on their own. Sometimes it’s nice for them to not have a schedule, where they don’t have to be somewhere and do something. I think that truly makes it a situation where they feel like they’re getting some rest.

"Today is light. A little offense, hitting and defensive work. Run the bases. Pitchers are getting their workouts in. It’ll be separate, pitchers and position players. Then tomorrow - Tuesday and Wednesday - we’ll get team workouts in and then I imagine we’ll head to Stillwater. I guess to get back to your question, yeah, you get a little down time, get a chance to rest a little bit. Then we won’t overdo it the next couple of days. We’ll just try to get them right."

After dominating the SEC in 2021 Arkansas was the hunted this season getting the best shot from every team it seemed. Not hosting a regional Van Horn may use the underdog us against the world message to his team.

"I’m sure that’s one way to say it," Van Horn said. "We feel like we haven’t played good down the stretch, as everyone knows. So we want to flip it. Sometimes maybe going on the road is a little less distraction. We’ll see how it turns out. Obviously we’d love to be playing here in front of our fans but we’re not and we know what’s in front of us so we’re just going to embrace it and go get after it."

Arkansas has already lost to Missouri State 6-4 on May 3 in Baum-Walker Stadium. The first game won't be an easy one either as Grand Canyon presents an offense that is hitting over .300 as a team against an Arkansas staff that has struggled some in recent weeks.

For instance, Arkansas has one player hitting over .300 in outfielder Chris Lanzilli. He is hitting .318. Michael Turner is at .298 and Cayden Wallace .295. On the other side, Grand Canyon has one player hitting over .400, seven over .300 and another batting .299. It would be easy to chalk up the difference to the Antelopes didn't play in the SEC, and that would be fair to a point, but don't ignore the fact Grand Canyon was 7-4 against Power 5 teams. They beat Arizona 19-3 and swept Texas Tech. Van Horn knows this game won't be an easy one.

"No, they won their league," Van Horn said. 'I think they were 25-5 or something like that in league play. And then their mid-weeks, they caught some of those teams probably early. Arizona State is obviously right down the street. They’re good. That’s I mean, I don’t know what else to say? Arizona has a lot of good players. They recruit out of Arizona, big time. They get kids out of California. Grand Canyon is an up and coming university nationally. It’s a good place."

Van Horn has seen his staff get a lift in recent weeks from Will McEntire and Zack Morris. McEntire, a former Bryant standout, was the midweek starter and impressed in that role. He got moved to the Friday night starter late in the season. He appeared in eight games with six starts. He is 1-2 with an ERA of 3.07. Morris has appeared in 17 games, all out of the bullpen, and is 5-0 with an ERA of 1.69.

"They’ve been big," Van Horn said. "That was right around the time we met with the team, we said, ‘We gotta have more. We’ve gotta have a couple of guys step up — a position player or two, a pitcher or two. We gotta get a little deeper in the bullpen.’ Those guys did it for us and hopefully they can build off of that and have confidence going into postseason."

Closer Brady Tygart gave everyone a scare when he left the Florida game in the SEC Tournament with speculation he was injured. Tygart is 2-3 with an ERA of 2.62 and has saved eight games. Van Horn explained he wasn't injured.

"He's good," Van Horn said. "He threw a bullpen yesterday and he was really good with it. Coach (Matt) Hobbs said he threw extremely well. So I think he's 100%. He told me later, I said, 'What happened?' And he just said, 'I think I might have gotten dehydrated.' I said, 'You got to learn from that because we're playing in the heat. You can't just start drinking water in the morning. You got to take care of that in advance.' It's something that we'll be discussing with our team again today and tomorrow and really keeping an eye on."

Van Horn admitted that in times such as this he does think back of some things he did when teams were struggling in the past heading into postseason.

"You look back at experience and compare this guy to that guy or this team to that team and remember how you got out of it, or maybe something that didn't work," Van Horn said. "We've been doing that a little bit. And really, it's been about being positive and talking about the future instead of the past. And this team did that. And this team did that. You go over things. These guys are smart. They know if we're trying to sandbag them a little bit. It's that time of year that we shouldn't have to motivate anybody. It's more about just getting ready for the game, them getting healthy, feeling good when they throw the first pitch."

Van Horn also talked about Oklahoma State and Missouri State and was complimentary of both.

"Oklahoma State, I’ve been keeping up with them," Van Horn said. "I’m friends with Rob Walton, their pitching coach. We’ve coached together one summer with Team USA. Really good coach and good guy. I sent a text to him early this morning because I wasn’t sure where we were going. I said ‘who else is coming to Stillwater besides us?’ He goes ‘Well I haven’t heard anything.’ I was just playing with him. 

"They really pitch well. They’ve got three really good starters, got some big arms in the pen. Swung the bat well. They’ve been steady all year. Everybody has ups and downs, and their league is extremely good this year with OU coming on. TCU won the league regular season but didn’t get to host because they didn’t do well in the tournament and didn’t have a good RPI. Texas is good obviously. So, they’re at the top of a real good league. Great ballpark.

"As far as Missouri State, I knew that they had the conference tournament at their ballpark. So, there’s always that thought. I didn’t spend a lot of time with it, but I thought for sure they could win that tournament and deep down thought they would. Dallas Baptist wasn’t playing very well in league play. Evansville was playing good and Southern Illinois. I knew Missouri State was every bit as good as them. They’ve got a good lineup, and they play hard. So, nothing surprised me. I think we have a really strong regional. I think there’s 10 strong regionals, or maybe more than that. It’s going to be a good challenge all the way around."

Stillwater Regional

Friday, June 3
Game 1 –Arkansas vs. Grand Canyon – Noon CT (SEC Network)
Game 2 – Oklahoma State vs. Missouri State – 6 p.m. CT (ESPN+)

Saturday, June 4
Game 3 – Loser G1 vs. Loser G2 – Noon CT (TV TBD)
Game 4 – Winner G1 vs. Winner G2 – 6 p.m. CT (TV TBD)

Sunday, June 5
Game 5 – Winner G3 vs. Loser G4 – Noon CT (TV TBD)
Game 6 – Winner G4 vs. Winner G5 – 6 p.m. CT (TV TBD)

Monday, June 6
Game 7 – Winner G6 vs. Loser G6 (if necessary) – 6 p.m. CT (TV TBD)