Arkansas Athletics

It’s been two full decades since “DVH” became the unofficial acronym of Arkansas baseball.

Norm DeBriyn built Razorback baseball into a new, exciting brand and took the Hogs ever so close to greatness often. When he retired after 2002, Frank Broyles and Co. plucked Dave Van Horn away from Nebraska after seeing the former Hog infielder guide the middling Huskers to a pair of College World Series berths in their home state. He’s done almost nothing but win ever since.

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For a stretch, Arkansas carved out this niche in the 2000s as an occasional thorn in the side of the SEC power brokers. Van Horn took the 2004 and 2009 teams to Omaha, the latter being under .500 in conference play, then replicated the feat in 2012 and 2015 with deeper, steadier teams.

He had Hog baseball in a consistent groove: From 2003 to 2015, Arkansas never won more than 19 games in the SEC and never lost more than 17. In that 2015 season, Andrew Benintendi took off and enhanced the program’s profile by winning virtually every college player of the year honor, including the Golden Spikes Award.

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Then came the outlier year that still defies explanation. In 2016, the team sputtered once SEC play began, then flat-out stunk. Having been at least 10 games over .500 for 13 straight seasons, Van Horn now had a team that ended its season 26-29, with a 13-game losing skid and a variety of other ills along the way. At the time, and perhaps only to a jaded bozo like myself, it looked like it might signal an unwanted downward trend.

I should’ve known better, as DVH restored order from that aberration. His already-stellar recruiting kept improving, and his consistency and stable tenure started to matter in a league where coaching turnover (and controversy) has been rampant.

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Arkansas’s six-season run since that lost 2016 campaign represents nationally elite achievement and validation of Van Horn’s worth to the program. A model of consistency for that first decade or so, he’s now a titan who keeps his guys playing well into summer.

Yet that damned national title eludes him, and while DVH truthfully seems cooler and looser these days, you know he’s itching to rid himself of that albatross. His 2023 squad, frankly, didn’t look like it would have potential to hit that mark.

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Alas, the Hogs are now No. 2 in most polls, atop the overall SEC standings with a crucial weekend series in Nashville against a wobbling Vanderbilt team. They’re getting healthier by the day (despite the recent news that second baseman Peyton Stovall will miss the remainder of the season), and now, the guys at the bottom of the order are amassing important at-bats against pretty filthy pitching.

Hard to say how it all happened, frankly. This team’s not lighting up any of the conference statistical rankings, and the midweek game’s been a bedeviling thing at times. When I went to a bustling Dickey-Stephens Park for the Hogs’ annual, alleged easy win there, I watched Lipscomb play pretty pedestrian baseball and beat the Hogs anyway. I didn’t think for one minute I was watching a national championship contender.

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It always feels like Van Horn is at his best when that very scenario is in place. He’ll still show fire from the dugout steps and beyond if needed, but he mostly resembles a stealthy tactician now. Injuries depleted his pitching staff first, then knocked a couple of critical offensive pieces out of the lineup for extended stretches.

The Razorbacks rocked along. That Lipscomb loss didn’t faze Van Horn much, nor did the series in Athens where the Hogs ceded three games to a very average Georgia team, the last of which was a five-run ninth-inning rally.

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Those games could’ve broken a team’s spirit. Take a look at the bottom of the SEC West standings, and you’ll see the last two national champions languishing there. Baseball is such a fiendish game for that reason.

One bad season didn’t tarnish DVH’s legacy whatsoever; if anything, it steeled him for a new era of Hog baseball entirely. This first-place group has already welcomed Brady Tygart and Tavian Josenberger from injury, and now Jared Wegner returns in time for postseason play.

And it seems abundantly clear that each successive season brings a team that wants badly to be “the one” that gets to dogpile with DVH in Omaha come June.

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