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FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas rode the right arm of Kevin Kopps to its third straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament super regionals.
Pitching for the third time in four days, the ace reliever threw seven scoreless innings in relief to carry the Razorbacks to a 6-2 win over Nebraska in Monday’s winner-take-all Game 7 of the Fayetteville Regional.
Before the game, Kopps told pitching coach Matt Hobbs that he could probably go three innings, but he admitted that he fully expected it to be more than that - even though he had already already thrown 95 pitches over the weekend.
“I didn't really have an idea how many (pitches) I had left,” Kopps said. “I started warming up in the ninth yesterday. I felt really good, so I kind of had an idea that I'd be throwing pretty good.”
It turned out that he had much more in the tank. Entering the game after back-to-back walks by starter Jaxon Wiggins to start the third inning, Kopps proceeded to throw 90 pitches in a career-high seven innings.
The Cornhuskers managed just three hits and one hit batter while striking out eight times against the right-hander, who Nebraska coach Will Bolt said appeared to get better as his weekend pitch count crept up to 185.
“I've never seen anything like it as long as I've been involved in college baseball, to have a guy that's able to go out there and compete at such a high level in such an environment on this stage and to do it over and over and over,” Bolt said. “The guy is ... he was incredible today. Early on I thought maybe he wasn't quite as sharp maybe from being a little tired, but it just felt like he got better and better as the game went along.”
Kopps’ longest outing before Monday was a relief appearance on April 15, 2017, when he went 5 2/3 innings against Georgia as a redshirt freshman, and the most pitches he’d thrown over a single weekend this season was 125 against Tennessee.
The Razorbacks didn’t expect to keep him in the game so long. The plan was to ride him as long as they could before turning it over to Patrick Wicklander - Saturday’s starter - to finish it off, but that never came.
Pitching coach Matt Hobbs and Kopps talked in the tunnel after each inning and he refused to come out, especially after Arkansas scored four runs in the eighth to go up 6-2.
“We thought we’d let him go to the seventh, (but) he wouldn’t let us take him out,” Van Horn said. “He had a quick inning. He comes back in the eighth and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re going to take him out’ and we would probably bring Wicklander in for the ninth. We scored runs and Kevin said, ‘I’m going back out.’ What an incredible, incredible college pitcher.”
Despite the incredible pitch total, Kopps said he never felt fatigued during the game. Instead, he echoed Bolt’s feeling that he got stronger as the game went along.
“I don’t get sore or anything,” Kopps said. “The more I throw, the better I feel.”
The performance gave him 13 1/3 scoreless innings of relief and his second victory over the weekend. He also had a save and allowed only six hits and no walks with 15 strikeouts, earning MVP honors for the Fayetteville Regional.
Kopps has appeared in 31 of the Razorbacks’ 60 games this season and is 12-0 with 11 saves. His ERA dropped to 0.68, the lowest by an SEC pitcher with at least 40 innings since 1981, and he now has 120 strikeouts, which is tied for sixth on the UA single-season list, in a team-high 79 2/3 innings.
Van Horn said he did some research and believes Kopps’ usage this year is similar to how Florida used closer Michael Byrne, who made 37 appearances in 70 games during the 2018 season.
“The difference is that Kevin’s 24 and that individual was 21,” Van Horn said. “I talked with (Hobbs) about it, just making sure we’re doing the right thing. Kevin’s like, ‘You’re doing the right thing. I’m fine. Give me the ball.’ He’s got a great arm action - it’s short, quick, a strike-throwing machine.
“The kid’s a warrior. He wouldn’t let us take him out of the game. Yeah, I know that we have the final call there, but man, this is a team. They want Kevin on the mound and Kevin wants to be on the mound.”
Another Early Deficit
When Kopps came into the game, he inherited runners on first and second with no outs in the third inning and a 1-0 deficit.
Nebraska struck first with a leadoff home run in the second by Luke Roskam and actually scratched across one more with Kopps on the mound.
Joe Acker laid down a sacrifice bunt to advance the runners and set up an RBI opportunity for Jaxon Hallmark, who drove one in on a ground out that made it 2-0 Cornhuskers.
However, it could have been much worse. Reminiscent of Friday, when he saved a pair of runs on a diving catch to end the fourth inning, Christian Franklin made another spectacular diving grab to rob Spencer Schwellenbach of extra bases and an RBI.
Both of the plays came with Kopps on the mound and in his first inning of work.
