Baseball, the sport with the most games played in a season, doesn't need perfection. It just needs timeliness. Arkansas is delivering that so far.
The Arkansas Razorbacks do not have a flawless, dominant baseball team. We can all admit that. We can then say two things: 1) It's only late February, one week into the season. 2) The Hogs are winning a lot of baseball games.
It doesn't have to be pretty. Baseball is like that. In the majors, they play 162, far more than any other professional team sport. In college baseball, the total number of regular season games is over 100 games lower, but that's still nearly double the length of the college basketball regular season. In a sport meant to be played daily -- not just once (football) or twice (hoops) per week -- all that really matters is doing enough on the day.
Through six games, Arkansas has steadily done enough on the day.
The Hogs walked off Xavier in the bottom of the ninth for a 7-6 win at Baum-Walker Stadium on Saturday. For most of the first week of the season, the pitching was carrying the hitting. UA was able to grind out wins even when the bats weren't coming alive, weren't putting the ball in play, weren't generating a lot of traffic on the basepaths.
Saturday marked a change. Hunter Dietz was decent but not spectacular. The middle relief wasn't great and the back end of the bullpen gave up a late 6-4 lead. No matter. The bats were there this time, on a day when they needed to be.
Cam Kozeal hit for the cycle and scored the winning run in the ninth.
Kuhio Aloy homered and then drove in Kozeal with a walkoff single in the ninth.
Ryder Helfrick went yard. The sticks produced seven runs and came much closer to the expected Arkansas standard.
It wasn't perfect. It wasn't a smooth ride or an easy, linear win. Arkansas had to play from behind at times. It had to enter the ninth inning tied. It prevailed.
There will hopefully come a time when wins come more easily, and to be very clear, there's a ton of room for growth on this team. However, whenever this team gets roped into a close game in the latter innings, it is finding ways to win. The Hogs have an 11th-inning walkoff under their belt, and on Saturday they added a ninth-inning walkoff. Good teams come through these tight spots.
The growth is expected to emerge, but early in the season, collecting wins is the main job. Dave Van Horn has been in this business long enough to know that.