Arkansas exceeded all expectations by making a run to the College World Series in 2019.

From losing several key pieces to last year’s national runner-up team that came so close to winning a title to being ranked No. 16 in the preseason HawgBeat Composite Poll - despite head coach Dave Van Horn truly believing they’d be unranked - to the pair of heartbreaking one-run losses, the Razorbacks had several great moments on their journey back to Omaha.

HawgBeat’s Andrew Hutchinson was there every step of the way. He covered more games from the ballpark - 48 of 66 - than any other media member, including every game at Baum-Walker Stadium and five road trips (Austin, Springfield, North Little Rock, Hoover and Omaha), while watching and/or listening to the other 18 on television/radio.

Here is a look at his top 10 moments from the Razorbacks’ 2019 baseball season…

HawgBeat's coverage of the Razorbacks' Road to Redemption in Omaha was made possible by Arkansas Oral Surgery, which has offices located in Conway and Russellville.

This moment came at the expense of Arkansas, but it was still cool to see the warm welcome former Arkansas infielder Hunter Wilson received when Oral Roberts visited Baum-Walker Stadium on April 9.

A role player on last year’s national runner-up team who was beloved by his teammates and the fans because of his energy, Wilson was greeted with hugs from Dave Van Horn and several players during pregame warmups and got a standing ovation from the midweek crowd of 4,360 before his first at bat.

He acknowledged the love by tipping his helmet to the fans, all while the UA marketing department played his old walk-up song - “Cowboy” by Kid Rock - and showed a graphic of a cowboy tipping his hat on the scoreboard, an homage to his nickname with the Razorbacks - “Cowboy.”

It was already a great moment, but Wilson made it even better by hitting his second - and final - home run of 2019 in the eighth inning. Even though it pulled the Golden Eagles within 11-8, several fans still gave him a standing ovation.

Wilson ended up earning first-team All-Summit League honors, finishing his final collegiate season hitting .302 with two home runs and 33 RBIs.

Another nod to the fans occupies our No. 9 spot on the list. Playing more than 1,200 miles away from home, Central Connecticut State came to Fayetteville with about 60 fans and picked up a few thousand more before heading back home to New Britain, Conn.

The Blue Devils had never won an NCAA Tournament game entering the Fayetteville Regional, but after losing their opening game to Arkansas, they knocked off No. 2 seed Cal in an elimination game.

That night, the Central Connecticut players were at the Arkansas-TCU winner’s bracket game and some fans motioned for them to join the fun in the Hog Pen, where they learned how to call the Hogs and wave the Arkansas flags.

The experience endeared the Blue Devils to Arkansas’ fan base and made them the rooting favorite in Sunday’s elimination game against TCU. They battled for several innings before coming up short, but still got a standing ovation from a few hundred Razorback fans in attendance.

(RELATED: Arkansas fans prove once again to be among best in college baseball)

Head coach Charlie Hickey and several players were very complimentary of the way they were treated, while there was a mutual respect displayed by players’ parents and fans on social media. Some are even calling for a non-conference matchup between the schools in the near future.

A person with the program summed it up best when he said, “I told my wife this morning, ‘I never knew I needed to come to Arkansas, but now I don’t want to leave.’”

Arkansas’ trip to Austin, Texas, for a two-game midweek series against former Southwest Conference rival Texas in March was probably overshadowed by the Game 2 loss, but it opened the series with a bang.

Retired in order on only five pitches in the first inning, the Razorbacks exploded in the second inning. Although the first run came on an infield single, the highlight of the game was easily Christian Franklin’s grand slam.

What at first appeared to just be a fly ball that’d be a sacrifice fly kept carrying and eventually cleared the left field fence. A base running mistake nearly cost him the grand slam, though, as he nearly passed Jacob Nesbit - who was retreating to potentially tag up - on the base path.

Although his right foot went past Nesbit, an umpire later told him that his whole body had to pass him for it to be an out. It was a close call that gave Arkansas a 5-0 lead in a game it won 11-4.

In the grand scheme of things, midweek games don’t mean much, but a dominant win over Texas - even though it was very overrated at No. 9 - is always going to excite Arkansas fans.

The Razorbacks almost won the next day, too, but couldn’t overcome all of the walks issued by their freshman pitchers that Van Horn cycled through. If there was a silver lining to that frustrating loss, it was that the Longhorns went all out to win the game by throwing their closer, Cole Quintanilla, the final three innings.

With him unavailable a few days later, Texas watched a 2-0 lead at TCU evaporate in the ninth inning, signaling its ultimate collapse. The Longhorns went 11-19 the rest of the way, failing to win another Big 12 series.

Casey Martin has been Arkansas’ fastest player each of the last two seasons and his speed was on full display this year.

In addition to his 10 stolen bases and four triples, he hit an incredible three inside-the-park home runs in 2019. The first two came against non-conference foes Louisiana Tech and Grambling, while the third was at Kentucky.

Inside-the-park home runs are rare, but there is no way of knowing if three in a season is some sort of record because they go down in the record books as regular home runs. However, the fact that his last two came in back-to-back games is something we’ll probably never see again.

Here’s video of the play, complete with UA radio play-by-play man Phil Elson’s call…

The Razorbacks swept three SEC teams this season, but none were quite as impressive as taking three straight against Mississippi State.

Coming into the weekend as the No. 2 team in the country, the Bulldogs were red-hot, having won four of their first five SEC series. Meanwhile, Arkansas had lost two of its last three.

Winning games at Baum-Walker Stadium has become somewhat automatic for the Razorbacks, but no one could have predicted the way they beat Mississippi State.

In the opener, Isaiah Campbell out-dueled eventual SEC Pitcher of the Year Ethan Small. He gave up just two earned runs on five hits and no walks while striking out 10 in 7 2/3 innings, while Small was charged with three earned runs on five hits and one walk while striking out nine in six innings.

Small actually retired the first 12 Razorbacks and 15 of the first 16 before getting tagged for three runs in the sixth. Dominic Fletcher’s two-run home run in the eighth proved to be the difference in a 5-3 win.

The next two games weren’t even close. A five-run seventh inning helped the Razorbacks clinch the series with a 12-5 victory and then they got a masterful performance from Connor Noland to complete the sweep with a 10-2 win.

Facing an SEC team for the first time since failing to retire any of the five batters he faced at Vanderbilt, the freshman threw 7 2/3 scoreless innings and limited one of the best lineups in the country to four hits.

The other two SEC sweeps were completed in nearly identical fashion, with Casey Opitz notching walk-off hits after Arkansas seemed destined to win only two of three games in the series.

On the first conference weekend of the year, the Razorbacks won a pair of close games to clinch the series. They gave up a two-run homer in the ninth that tied the finale, but Opitz delivered a game-winning RBI single in the bottom of the ninth.

A month and a half later, Arkansas already had a series win over Tennessee in the bag going into the finale. The Volunteers scored two runs in the eighth to take a one-run lead, with Matt Cronin blowing a save opportunity, but the Razorbacks wouldn’t go away quietly.

Down to their final two outs in the ninth, Franklin forced extras with an opposite-field home run. In the 10th, Arkansas won it when Opitz ripped an RBI double down the left field line with two outs.

Although he ended the season with the worst batting average among the Razorbacks’ starters, Opitz had a knack for delivering in clutch situations. In addition to the two walk-offs and his game-winning hit listed below, he also had the two-run single that helped Arkansas beat TCU in the winner’s bracket game at the Fayetteville Regional.

(The Razorbacks’ only other walk-off win came in the first weekend of the season, as Heston Kjerstad hit a game-winning RBI single with one out in the ninth to complete a sweep of Eastern Illinois.)

LSU has been Arkansas’ kryptonite for most of the last two decades. Before this season, head coach Dave Van Horn had won only two series - in 2004 and 2011 - over the Tigers in 16 years.

Since that last series win, the Razorbacks had won just six of their last 28 matchups with LSU. The losses included a pair of games they led 9-1 and 8-1, with the first featuring a rally sparked by a possum coming on the field. The latter would have given Arkansas a series win, but the spirit of the possum lingered and led to a five-run ninth inning.

Having won nine of its previous 10 SEC games, Arkansas was in prime position to flip the script this May. Sure enough, it did just that by jumping all over LSU with 12 runs in the first four innings of a 14-4 series-opening win.

The Razorbacks fell behind 3-0 early in Game 2, but used a six-run eighth inning to take an eight-run lead and eventually win 11-6. After the win, a graphic showing a dead possum was displayed on the Baum-Walker Stadium scoreboard.

It seemed like Arkansas was going to finish off the sweep the next day, taking a 2-0 lead into the eighth inning. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be, as Antoine Duplantis hit a three-run home run and LSU won 3-2.

One of the craziest games of the season came on the final day of the Vanderbilt series. Trying to avoid getting swept by the No. 2 Commodores, the Razorbacks fell behind 7-3 through three, with starter Cody Scroggins giving up six runs and lasting only two innings.

With the help of an Opitz homer and Trevor Ezell two-run single, Arkansas took a brief 8-7 lead only to give it right back to Vanderbilt. The sweep seemed imminent as the Razorbacks went to the ninth trailing 11-9, but then the craziness happened.

After Ezell grounded out to start the inning, Martin hit a single and scored on Matt Goodheart’s RBI triple. Fletcher followed with a game-tying RBI single and then, down to its final out, Arkansas scratched across three more runs with an RBI double by Nesbit and two-run single by Opitz.

The hit by Opitz proved to be the game-winner because Austin Martin led off the bottom of the ninth with a home run to pull Vanderbilt within 14-12. That ended up being the final score, as Marshall Denton stranded the tying runs on base by coming out of the bullpen and striking out both batters he faced.

The best part of the win? It produced these glorious photos of Van Horn…

This is the moment Van Horn pointed to as when he realized this year’s team had a chance to be pretty good and make it back to Omaha.

The Razorbacks dropped their first home series since 2017 by losing their final two games against Ole Miss and followed it up by suffering an embarrassing 10-run midweek loss to UALR, their first ever game against an in-state foe.

Arkansas hit the road the ensuing weekend, heading to Auburn for a top-25 showdown. The losing streak reached four games when it blew a 3-0 lead and lost to the Tigers with Campbell on the mound.

Because of rain, the Razorbacks had to turn right around and play again after that disappointing loss. In the nightcap of the doubleheader, they once again saw a 3-0 lead disappear.

This time, though, Arkansas managed to tie it up with an RBI single by Franklin in the eighth inning and the game went to extras. Auburn seemingly won it on a walk-off single in the 10th, even celebrating on the field, only for the umpires to review it and determine that Franklin’s throw from left field got the runner at home.

That extended the game and Ezell gave the Razorbacks the lead in the 12th with a two-run home run. However, a leadoff error by Martin eventually led to the Tigers scoring a pair of unearned runs against Kole Ramage, who had his best outing of the year by not allowing an earned run in 4 2/3 innings - all of which were in extras.

Finally, in the 15th inning, Kjerstad launched a leadoff home run - his first hit in eight at bats - and Goodheart tacked on two more runs with a double. The Razorbacks won their longest game since 2004 by a final score of 9-6 and followed it up with a dominant 8-0 victory in the rubber match the next day.

“I started realizing that we had a pretty good team and they were really determined,” Van Horn said at the pre-College World Series press conference. “Felt like they were tough and I told them, ‘I’m going to kind of get out of your way a little bit. We’re going to keep working. I’m going to let you guys run with this,’ and they’ve done a tremendous job.”

To make it back to the College World Series for a second straight year, something that had never happened in program history, Arkansas would have to get by another team that had its number in recent years.

As mentioned above, the Razorbacks lost a home series to Ole Miss in March. It was their first series loss at Baum-Walker Stadium since 2017…when the Rebels also beat them.

Sure enough, Arkansas was paired with Ole Miss in the super regional round. The teams split the first two games, setting up a winner-take-all Game 3.

Things didn’t get off to a great start for the Razorbacks, as they fell behind 1-0 and starter Patrick Wicklander put runners on second and third with two outs in the second inning. That prompted Van Horn to bring in Scroggins and the redshirt junior delivered with 4 1/3 scoreless innings in relief.

Meanwhile, Arkansas’ offense exploded for 14 runs over five innings. There was no suspense when Nesbit made a diving stop and threw out Thomas Dillard to seal the 14-1 victory that sent the Razorbacks to Omaha.

It was Arkansas’ 10th all-time appearance in the College World Series, which is tied for 16th in NCAA history. Including his two trips with Nebraska, Van Horn has made it eight times, which will be the most among active coaches when Mike Martin retires after this season.