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For the second straight year, Arkansas’ road to Oklahoma City will run through Fayetteville.
Fresh off winning their first outright regular-season SEC championship and SEC Tournament title, the Razorbacks were selected as the No. 4 overall seed in the 2022 NCAA Tournament on Sunday.
The rest of the Fayetteville Regional consists of No. 24 Oregon as the 2 seed, Wichita State as the 3 seed and Princeton as the 4 seed. It is paired with the Seattle Regional, which is hosted by No. 13 overall seed Washington and also includes Texas, Lehigh and Weber State.
Arkansas will open up against Princeton at 5 p.m. CT Friday on the SEC Network. It will be their first meeting in program history.
The Razorbacks last played Oregon in 2011 and is 3-3 all-time against the Ducks. They’re 10-4 all-time against Wichita State, including a 7-4 win over the Shockers at Bogle Park back on Feb. 19.
If they get through the regional, Arkansas could get a rematch with Washington, which it lost to twice in Mexico at the very beginning of the season.
Having reached the super regionals twice in the past three postseasons, the Razorbacks are looking for their first ever trip to the Women’s College World Series.
Another SEC Title
On the same day the softball team took down Missouri to win the SEC Tournament, Arkansas’ men’s and women’s track and field teams were competing at the SEC Outdoor Championships in Oxford, Miss.
The men edged Alabama by six points, 120-114, to win their 21st SEC Outdoor title and complete their second straight SEC Triple Crown, as they also captured the cross country and indoor conference titles earlier this season. It is the 17th conference Triple Crown in school history.
The women came up just shy of an eighth SEC Triple Crown, finishing four points behind Florida, 107-103, to place second. However, sophomore Britton Wilson did make history at the event, becoming the first person to win the 400 meters and 400-meter hurdles in the same SEC Outdoor Championship meet.
RPI Update
The baseball team dropped two of three games to Vanderbilt to lose its first SEC home series since 2019, snapping a streak of 12 straight series wins.
It was a premier opportunity for the Razorbacks to continue climbing in the RPI and position themselves for a top-eight national seed, but instead, they fell 10 spots to No. 29.
In addition to now being tied with Texas A&M — which owns the head-to-head tiebreaker — atop the SEC West standings at 17-10, Arkansas is well outside the typical range for top-eight seeds in the RPI.
The Razorbacks end the regular season with a trip to Tuscaloosa and three games against Alabama, which is No. 53 in the RPI.
Scholarship Situations
Arkansas was active in the portal this weekend, with the men’s basketball team landing guard Ricky Council IV from Wichita State on Friday and the football team landing wide receiver Matt Landers from Toledo on Sunday.
For more analysis of what Council brings to Eric Musselman’s squad, check out Jackson Collier’s great breakdown. What we’re focusing on here is the fact that he brings the Razorbacks back up to 14 scholarship players if Jaylin Williams decides to return to school — or puts them right at the 13-man limit if he stays in the NBA Draft.
Williams is in Chicago this week for the NBA Draft Combine, which begins Monday and goes through Sunday, and has until June 1 to withdraw from the draft and maintain his college eligibility.
On the football side of things, Landers uses one of Sam Pittman’s two remaining scholarships in the 2022 class and fills his desire to bring in another wide receiver. The last spot will likely go to another defensive lineman.
When — or if — the Razorbacks do sign another defensive lineman, they’ll be back up to 85 scholarship players for the 2022 season, according to HawgBeat’s unofficial numbers. If any other players transfer out, their scholarships would then have to be filled by walk-ons who have been with the team for at least one year.
Click here for the latest breakdown of Arkansas’ 2022-23 men’s basketball roster and here for the latest 2022 scholarship distribution for football.
Burks Struggles on Day 1
In his first day of rookie minicamp, former Arkansas wide receiver Treylon Burks didn’t make a great impression on Titans fans.
The first-round pick appeared to be out of shape and struggled to get through drills Friday afternoon. He actually needed to use an inhaler and didn’t make it through the entire practice, according to local media covering the Titans.
However, Burks was back on the practice field Saturday and didn’t have any issues.
Other Pro Hogs Tidbits
On the diamond, a couple of former Razorbacks now in the big leagues were in the news over the weekend.
Andrew Benintendi, the 2015 Golden Spikes Award winner, won his salary arbitration case with the Royals on Friday. Instead of the $7.3 million offered by Kansas City, he will make $8.5 million this year before entering free agency this offseason. The decision comes as Benintendi is off to a hot start in 2022, hitting .316/.375/.421.
It wasn’t good news for James McCann on Friday, as news came out that he needed surgery on a broken hamate bone in his left wrist. That will keep him sidelined for about six weeks. An excellent defensive catcher, McCann is hitting just .196/.266/.286 this season.
Down on the farm, Kevin Kopps is struggling in his first full season in Double-A, with a 5.11 ERA and 14-to-10 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 12 1/3 innings, but he did help the San Antonio Missions finish off a combined no-hitter Sunday. He worked around a two-out walk in a hitless ninth inning.
