'No Tax' on Pitching Staff to Win SEC Tournament Games

With two outs in the fourth inning, Arkansas pitcher Hagen Smith didn't want to come out of the game, even with the bases loaded. Razorbacks coach Dave Van Horn wasn't budging off the decision to limit him to 70 pitches.

Smith ended up throwing 76 (Van Horn thought later it was 70 on the nose), but he wasn't getting talked out of that decision. He said later that mistake happened once and almost before he got settled in the dugout it looked like a track meet around the bases. Van Horn is gearing to the NCAA Regional next week at Baum-Walker Stadium in Fayetteville.

"He wasn't done," Van Horn said about Smith. "We didn't want to tax anybody."

You don't even have to read between the lines. Dave knows the games that matter start next week because the goal for the Hogs every single year is not just how to reach Omaha, but win what has eluded him his entire career — a championship. Pitching is maybe the biggest keys to that and burning up a staff in a conference tournament for a trophy can keep you from a bigger prize.

"They're two of the best left-handed pitchers in college baseball," LSU coach Jay Johnson said later about Smith and Hunter Hollan, who finished out the win. "A lot of respect in the same way I talk about the top of their lineup, I have the same respect for those two guys on the mound. They have four pitches that they can execute, and that's what you have to have to pile up strikeouts against us, and they executed very, very well."

Van Horn stuck to his script with the pitchers, starting Smith, then going with Hollan. That decision was made days before and unless it fell apart, he was going to go with it. It was a reversal of roles from earlier in the year when Hollan started and Smith came on to finish it off. It worked that way, too.

"Me and Hunter actually talked about that this morning at practice when we were taking BP," Smith said. "We were talking about how the roles were switched. Hunter did an amazing job, honestly, coming in behind me and pounding the zone, getting me the outs."

He hasn't come out of the bullpen much his entire time playing the game.

"That was my first time coming out of the bullpen since probably junior year of high school," Hollan said. "It wasn't really any different. You've just got to come in with the mindset that I'm going to compete in the zone and go with the game plan that you want. We had a really good game plan the first time we played them, and we kind of stuck to that and it worked out."

Now they get Friday off before playing Saturday at noon against the winner of the LSU-Texas A&M game this afternoon.

Brady Tygart should be available, but we probably won't know about that until Saturday. The result is plenty of arms should be available for that one. A championsip game would just be a complete guess.

The goal in all this is to set things up for the games to be played next week. They are the ones that matter more than the ones in Hoover, Ala.