Arkansas waited patiently for three years to get back to Omaha, so when the downpour there started just as the Hogs were getting their sea legs beneath them, what’s another three hours?

The Hogs burst into Nebraska as one of the hottest teams in the eight-team field. Save for a slight hiccup against South Carolina on Sunday in the Super Regional, which they quickly rectified with a thorough beating of the Gamecocks the following night, Arkansas was in an offensive groove and the bullpen had been doing its job in relief of some hit-and-miss starting pitching. When the Hogs drew No. 13 Texas, their onetime Southwest Conference rival, it seemed like a bit of a godsend to Razorback fans who trekked to Cornhusker Country to see if this team was the one that would give the Hogs their best shot at a national title in the frontline sports since Nolan Richardson stalked the basketball sidelines.

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After all, the Hogs had scheduled the Longhorns for a midseason nonconference series and put two quick wins on their building ledger. The Hogs scored first on Sunday, but Texas rebounded to take a very brief 2-1 lead when David Hamilton lofted a sacrifice fly off Blaine Knight in the top of the fifth inning. In truth, it was the only time all day that Texas fans got to crow a little, and Razorback senior Luke Bonfield hushed the burnt orange noise authoritatively in the bottom half of the inning. With two outs, the New Jersey product authored the best moment of a solid, if understated, career in cardinal-and-white by rocketing Nolan Kingham’s pitch into the seats in TD Ameritrade’s cavernous left-center power alley, and Arkansas was back up, 3-2.

Dave Van Horn curiously opted to spell Knight, who was on his way to a pristine 13-0 mark but had only tossed 81 pitches over five shaky but reasonably efficient innings. Barrett Loseke worked in and out of a minor jam in the top half of the sixth, and then the Hogs started bushwhacking the Horns’ beleaguered relievers. Kingham yielded consecutive singles to Carson Shaddy and Jared Gates, two players who have really come alive in the postseason, and Texas reliever Parker Joe Robinson was all over the place, walking back-to-back hitters on only 11 pitches before giving way to Josh Sawyer, who failed to stop the bleeding or the forthcoming rains when he walked in the Hogs’ fifth run. The umpiring crew called for the tarp to be unrolled at that point, and it felt a little bothersome because the Razorback momentum was really just escalating at that point.

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The teams didn’t take the field again until 169 minutes had passed. Texas trotted out junior Chase Shugart for help, and he seemed like a good candidate to put an end to the threat, having blanked powerful Tennessee Tech for six innings a week earlier in the Super Regional. But Arkansas’s two vaunted freshmen were unimpressed: First, Casey Martin drilled an RBI single to left field to plate a run, and then Heston Kjerstad roped one in the same direction to bring home two more. A previously scuffling Dominic Fletcher greeted the Horns’ fourth pitcher of the inning with another two-run single and Shaddy brought across the eighth run of the frame with another hit, staking Arkansas to an 11-2 lead and making the Longhorns’ late-inning output of three runs meaningless. The Hogs took the 11-5 decision in a businesslike fashion, dispatching the Horns so routinely that even an ESPN broadcast crew that had previously been obsessed with showing nefarious cheat Roger Clemens watching the action — his Golden Spikes candidate son, Kody, was a harmless 1-for-5 with two strikeouts — started commenting openly about how poised, confident and comfortable Arkansas looked.

The Hogs’ 45th win of the season was something of a delayed bit of retribution for Van Horn. When he guided his second Arkansas team to the CWS in 2004, those Hogs were a little light on Major League-caliber talent and top-rated Texas simply pummeled them in an opening-round game, 13-2, with a team that may have been the best one Augie Garrido assembled (even if Cal State-Fullerton ended up knocking off the ‘Horns in the championship round). Van Horn’s players may have all been born well after the Arkansas-Texas rivalry was rendered mostly inconsequential, but he was a standout for Norm DeBriyn in an era where then-Texas coach Cliff Gustafson simply lorded over college baseball, taking the Longhorns to Omaha an unthinkable 17 times over 29 seasons.

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Van Horn’s not coaching in an era where that sort of regularity is sustainable. College baseball was a bit of an outlier sport in those days, and now it’s a revenue generator for the best programs. Even still, this is Van Horn’s fifth Razorback team to make it to Omaha in a 15-season span, and it’s easily his best one from top to bottom. Knight and Kacey Murphy form a potent 1-2 front-end pitching tandem, and the lineup is locked in right now, having accounted for nine runs per game in the NCAA Tournament and hitting double-digit run production in four of the six wins thus far. Texas Tech is a formidable second-game foe, but if the Hogs can stay away from the loser’s bracket, which bedevils even the best teams that slip up once they arrive in Omaha, then there’s a very discernible path to the finals if the team’s focus remains tight.

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