Although the last time the No. 3 national seed in the 2025 NCAA Baseball Tournament, the Arkansas Razorbacks (43-13, 20-10 SEC), arrived on a baseball field, they delivered an uninspiring performance in a loss to the No. 10 national seed, the Ole Miss Rebels (40-19, 16-14 SEC), in the SEC Baseball Tournament.
While that performance may have significantly diminished your faith in their chances to win the 2025 College World Series, Arkansas relief pitcher Will McEntire is an unexpected source to elevate your faith in the Hogs winning their elusive first College World Series championship.
With such phenomenal athletes on the Razorbacks' squad such as the 2025 SEC Player of the Year Wehiwa Aloy, Kuhio Aloy, Brent Iredale, Cam Kozeal, and Charles Davalan, many inside and outside of Razorback Nation will assert that it's more than puzzling to posit that Will McEntire is a significant key to the Hogs winning the 2025 College World Series. They will contend that it's downright ludicrous, given that McEntire isn't even in the top three of the team's best relief pitchers.
Will McEntire vs. Tennessee in Game 3
Even though you may not have McEntire in your top three of the Hogs' best relief pitchers, his incredible performance in a huge moment against an excellent Tennessee Volunteers (43-16, 16-14 SEC) team, the No. 14 national seed, was more than an incredible moment on the mound; it was an instructive statement to his team, Razorback Nation, and all of college baseball.
He pitched the final 3.2 innings of Game 3 against the Volunteers, allowing no hits and no runs, and delivered four strikeouts, leading the Razorbacks to an 8-4 victory and series win at Baum-Walker Stadium in Fayetteville.
What was most significant about his performance doesn't show up in the box score. It was the fiery style in which he commanded the mound that was most crucial for the Arkansas Razorbacks as they prepared to enter the postseason. His competitive fire was not simply conspicuous in his pitching output; he expressed it with his mouth and entire body.
While many will argue that athletes such as Wehiwa Aloy demonstrate their competitive fire in the noteworthy production that appears in the box score, in conference play, such displays of competitive fire were not a consistent enough motivating force. The team needed the fiery emotion of Will McEntire, affectionately known as Big Mac, to motivate their hitting and pitching to win challenging games consistently.
Arkansas baseball needs more competitive fire
Big Mac, who epitomizes what it means to be a Razorback, remaining loyal to the Hogs for six consecutive seasons, remarkable in this transfer portal era, reintroduced himself to his team, Razorback Nation, and all of college baseball. He put the college baseball world on notice that he's poised to supply that kind of veteran production and leadership out of the bullpen in the big moments to aid his team in winning crucial games in the postseason.
While others didn't give McEntire's performance the credit it merited, FanSided's Razorbackers named him the Razorbacker of the Week, its last such honor of the regular season.
Unfortunately, no other Razorback, except perhaps Arkansas starting pitcher Gage Wood, expresses competitive fire as demonstrably in vocal and visual ways as Big Mac. In the Razorbacks' uninspiring loss to Ole Miss in the SEC Baseball Tournament, the team lacked the competitive fire necessary to ignite their hitting and pitching.
When players see such emotion that Wood and McEntire can provide, they cannot help but employ it as fuel to hit and pitch at elite levels. Therefore, as a team, the Arkansas Razorbacks will need to deploy such emotional energy when the hitting and pitching need a boost.
If the team as a whole takes on Wood's and McEntire's intensity and arrives on the field each game as the aggressor, this collective intensity would make it far more difficult to defeat Arkansas, given that no team in the country has as talented a lineup as it does. By the way, being the aggressor doesn't mean swinging for the fences each time at the plate; it means stepping on the field with a serious commitment to dominate the opposing teams in multiple ways, not simply by hitting several homers each game.
Also, being the aggressor on the mound doesn't mean tossing fastball after fastball down the middle; it means pitchers using multiple types of pitches to sit batters down, as Big Mac did against Tennessee.
Final Thoughts
As the Arkansas Razorbacks prepare to face the North Dakota State Bisons (20-32, 13-15 Summit) in the opening round of the Fayetteville Regional tomorrow at Baum-Walker Stadium, they must establish their dominance early in the game, given that they have a decisive talent advantage. Opposing teams need to comprehend from their performance against the Bisons that the Hogs have finally entered the NCAA Baseball Tournament to win it all. If they're to accomplish such a feat, it will be by embracing Will McEntire's fiery spirit and allowing it to manifest in the way they approach and play each game.
If McEntire's spirit is evident in the way they approach and play each game, no team the Razorbacks face can handle them. Arkansas is being promoted as a team of destiny. However, if the team doesn't play inspired baseball each time it takes the field, this idea of the Razorbacks as "a team of destiny" will be exposed as mere fantasy.