FAYETTEVILLE — Whether or not Arkansas should try to win the SEC Tournament is always a topic of debate this time of year.
Critics argue it’s a waste of time that unnecessarily drains the team ahead of the much more important NCAA Regionals and quest to return to Omaha, while others claim it’s still a conference championship that should be desired.
However, there is no debating where head coach Dave Van Horn stands on the subject. He likes to win and would like to bring a trophy back to Fayetteville, but he won’t do it at the sake of jeopardizing the Razorbacks making it back to the College World Series.
“People are always getting on me, ‘You don’t really want to win that tournament,’” Van Horn told the Swatter’s Club last week. “Yeah, I want to win the tournament, but we want to go to Omaha, too. So we’re going to do everything we can.”
It’s a delicate balancing act that could ultimately hurt Arkansas’ chances of winning the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala., which began Tuesday with the No. 5-12 seeds playing a single-elimination round.
What it means is Van Horn might not ask starting pitchers to go quite as deep into games, especially if their pitch count gets up. He probably won’t overwork any of his relievers - so don’t expect Matt Cronin to close every game - and will likely utilize backup catcher Zack Plunkett to give starter Casey Opitz some rest, particularly if weather forces Arkansas to play two games in one day as it did a couple of years ago.
“The (SEC) Tournament can be very exciting and it can be very draining,” Van Horn said. “You have to really watch how you handle your pitching and maybe your catching. You don’t want to wear people down where it affects you in a Regional, but at the same time, we want to bring back a trophy.”
There is a theory that making it all the way to Sunday in Hoover can wear a team down because that means a team has played anywhere between four and six games over a five- or six-day span.
However, since the tournament went to its current format in 2013, five of the 12 SEC Tournament championship game participants have still made it to Omaha. Two more have advanced to the Super Regional stage. Of the remaining five that lost in the Regionals, only three did so as a host.
One thing working in the Razorbacks’ favor is they received the No. 2 seed as the co-champions of the SEC West and owning the tiebreaker with Mississippi State. If they remain in the winner’s bracket, they would play only four games in five days, with a day off between the first two games and last two games.
Arkansas actually knew going into the Texas A&M series that it already had a top-four seed wrapped up, meaning a bye into the double-elimination portion of the event, so the coaches have had plenty of time to get their pitching plan figured out.
The first game will be against the winner of the 7-10 matchup between Ole Miss and Missouri in the first round. It will begin around 1 p.m. on the SEC Network.
“If you go there and have to play on Tuesday, it’s win or go home,” Van Horn said. “If you lose, you may have a really good club with a lot of wins, but you came in fifth or sixth in the league and you’re already going home after one game. That’s going to happen to a couple of teams.”
Despite owning a pair of regular-season titles, Arkansas has never won the SEC tournament since joining the conference in 1992, but it has finished runner up four times - 1998, 1999, 2007 and 2017.
It is one of four teams without an SEC Tournament championship, with the others being Georgia, Kentucky and Missouri.
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