FAYETTEVILLE -- No. 1 Arkansas will take its 13-game winning streak to Auburn for a three-game series beginning Thursday night.

Arkansas (17-2, 3-0) and Auburn (13-6, 0-3) had completely different results in the opening SEC series for both. The Hogs swept Missouri only allowing one run in three games. On the other hand, Auburn was swept by Vanderbilt including an 11-1 run-rule loss in the opener. Vandy also took 13-5 and 9-6 wins over the Tigers in the series at Nashville, Tenn.

Auburn will be in the friendly confines of Plainsman Park this weekend though where they are 10-2 on the season. Dave Van Horn's Hogs have played their last 12 games at home. This will be the first true road games for his team since the three games in Arlington, Texas, were at a neutral site.

"I think our guys are excited," Van Horn said. "I’m fine. I like playing on the road. I think it kind of bonds the team a little bit. The routine, it’s just easy. Not as many outside distractions honestly. We work out on Wednesday evening and we feed ‘em. Get up and feed ‘em again and go over things during the day, and then you go to the field and play. 

"Same thing on Friday, then obviously, with Saturday being a day game, it’s a quick turnaround. It’s just a lot of thinking about baseball for 70 hours or whatever it is. I’m looking forward to it. I really feel like the team’s looking forward to it. No matter how it goes, I think it’ll be … If it goes great, great. If it doesn’t go good, I don’t think it’s because we’re on the road as much as we just didn’t play good or Auburn played really good. So, looking forward to it."

Vandy roughed the Auburn staff up pretty good, but the Tigers did score 12 runs in the three losses.

"They’ve a very offensive team," Van Horn said. "They hit home runs. They can score. Their lineup’s deep. … It’s hard to judge anything really this early in SEC play. You have a bad weekend, a bad day or two, and your numbers don’t look right. They’ll even up. Vanderbilt is tough at home, playing on that turf, no foul territory. It’s a totally different environment. It’s just a different game.

"Auburn’s really good at home. You look at their home record. They’ve done a nice job over there with their, I guess, accommodations for fans. Now you can go around right field and they’ve built another section, almost in center field, right-center. It can be loud there now. They get after you pretty good. So we’re going to have to pitch and field again so we don’t give up big innings, because those guys can score."

Auburn first baseman Cooper McMurray is enjoying a very good season at the plate. He has eight home runs, knocked in 28 runs and hitting .369. Catcher Ike Irish is hitting .325 with six round trippers and plated 27 runs. Left fielder Mason Maners is hitting .350 while shortstop Cooper Weiss has a .344 batting average.

"I can’t go over the list of all their guys but I’m going to tell you that the middle of their order, they swing at strikes, they make you throw it over the plate," Van Horn said. "They just use the whole field and you know some teams are a little pull happy. You can get them out with off-speed stuff late in the count. Auburn makes some really good adjustments. They stay through the middle of the field. They go the other way. Yeah, they just, the numbers back it up. They’ve been behind in a lot of games this year where they’ve come back and scored five, six, seven, eight runs in the last few innings to win. 

"So even if you get a lead on them you just feel like no lead is safe, you've really got to bear down, throw it over the plate and make them make them earn it. That's what we've done a good job of is throwing strikes. I think this is going to be a really good series and we’re going to have to play well."

Auburn will face South Alabama on Tuesday night while the Hogs don't have a midweek game prior to this weekend's series. Van Horn has used a starting rotation of Hagen Smith, Brady Tygart and Mason Molina thus far with outstanding success. Will that rotation remain the same with the first game on Thursday instead of Friday?

"Yeah, unless something happens between now and tomorrow when I think I have to announce it," Van Horn said. "I’m not even sure, since we play Thursday. But, yeah, we won’t change anything unless after some bullpens today some guys don’t feel right. But I don’t anticipate that."

Any limitations on the starters since the series starts one day earlier than usual?

"No, one less day, the weather looks good Thursday, Friday doesn’t look very good, Saturday looks a little better," Van Horn said. "Just unless we ran into some super cold weather or something. But that’s one reason we let the guys go a little longer this weekend pitch count wise, just continually building it up so they can go 90-100 if they need to. Just because it’s one day shorter, we don’t feel like it’s going to be an issue unless they tell us they’re tired or they’re not feeling right."

Against Missouri, Smith threw 100 pitchers, Tygart 87 and Molina 98. Van Horn liked what he got from his bullpen with such pitchers as Will McEntire, Gage Wood, Christian Foutch, Cooper Dossett, Koty Frank, Colin Fisher and Gabe Gaeckle. Van Horn was asked if these guys got enough innings last weekend with extended pitch counts for the starters?

"Well, honestly, there were some guys we kind of wanted to rest a little bit," Van Horn said. "Even Gaeckle, we almost didn’t pitch him an inning, but we thought, ‘Well, he threw (Tuesday), let’s throw him one inning.’ If we needed him to win a game, we were going to use him, but obviously that game was in hand. The Saturday game, it was in hand as well, obviously. But it was good to only throw him one inning.

"So really, in our opinion, except for maybe like Parker Coil or someone like that who needed to get out there and pitch a little bit, because he’s been working on a couple new things. We would have liked to see him pitch, but I feel good about the rest. Guys are throwing bullpens yesterday and today and getting ready for the weekend. They’re light bullpens. I think it was a good time to let guys just maybe get ready for an offensive Auburn on the road, in front of their crowd. Probably going to need more guys and hopefully we’ll be strong."

Thursday's first game will be at 6 p.m. and televised on the SEC Network. Friday's game is slated to start at 6 and then 2 p.m. on Saturday. The last two games can be streamed on the SEC Network+.