Despite Best Efforts, Van Horn Wasn't Risking Future at A&M in Finale
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — No matter how many different ways the media tried to rephrase the question, Arkansas Razorbacks coach Dave Van Horn wasn't going to say he waved the white towel to get out of College Station sooner Saturday.
"It is what it is," Van Horn told the media — again — after a 14-4 loss to the Aggies in seven innings. "Like I’ve already said like four times now, we weren’t going to use a couple of more pitchers that we need we need Wednesday, Thursday and hopefully Friday and maybe beyond."
The media sometimes has an answer they expect — or want. If they don't like the answer, like some young teenagers, they think it means rephrase the question. That might work on some young coaches on occasion, but Van Horn's been around awhile. He wasn't falling into the trap and was probably being honest, but nobody wanted to hear the answer.
"I would have rather played nine innings, obviously," Van Horn said. "I wanted some guys to get some hits. I mean, the guy's behind 0-2 in the count, throws a breaking ball away, started walking off the mound, it's a ball. Don't walk off the mound. Next pitch, sure enough, hits it off the end of the bat, it bloops in, game's over."
The Hogs put up a good fight for a few innings. Hudson White hit another home run as the designated hitter Saturday, getting a break from behind the plate. Wehiwa Aloy delivered his second homer of the final regular-season series. It was tied 4-4 at the bottom of the third, then A&M got a run and the dam burst in the sixth inning with six runs. Three more in the seventh ended things early.
"You obviously don’t want to get beat," Van Horn said. "Even if it’s by one run. The game started to get to the point there where when they scored six, we needed to make a move. We needed to score. When we came in, they kind of put us away."
At that point, Van Horn didn't want to put himself in a bind for the next two weeks trying to win a game that really doesn't matter by Sunday morning which way it came out. The goal all along hasn't been to win a game after they've already won the West and winning one more won't change much of anything for chances in Omaha. That probably will hold true next week, too, but he'll have his team ready in Hoover, Ala., for the SEC Tournament.
"We didn’t want to bring in a pitcher or two that had already thrown," he said. "It wasn’t going to help us to just hold them there. We just tried to finish out the game. We threw a couple of pitchers that we need come Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It was a but of unfortunate breaks. A couple of bloop hits. A couple of things went their way. Plus, they had good hitters in that lineup and it was over. Don’t like losing at all but we won the West. I don’t know. Sometimes, you’ve got to lose a game to win a game."
You got the idea at that point he explained everything there. It was fairly simple to understand. Some in the media couldn't, though.
"Sometimes you’ve got to lose a game, or let one go, to save people to win a game down the road," Van Horn explained further. "That’s kind of where we were pitching-wise, injury-wise, rest-wise. If we win the game, that’s great, but it was a real slim chance that we were going to come back and win that game with what they had left in their bullpen. Their ace reliever then threw 46 pitches on Thursday, so no reason for us to burn two more pitchers."
In other words, he was looking ahead, which probably should have been figured before the first pitch was ever thrown. No, he wasn't going to leave any pitchers out there too long, but Van Horn probably had an idea what he would do regardless of what happened and how far he was willing to extend things.
Don't spend too much time worrying about that run-rule loss. This isn't football where every single game matters that much. It's about where you finish and when. He knew that wasn't going to be somewhere in Texas.
HOGS FEED:
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• Pitcher comes off bench for nearly six innings of perfection to save Razorbacks' bacon
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ANDY HODGES
Sports columnist, writer, former radio host and television host who has been expressing an opinion on sports in the media for over four decades. He has been at numerous media stops in Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi.