Now that we know the path laid out before Dave Van Horn’s 2025 Arkansas Razorbacks to make a 10th College World Series appearance, it’s time once again for fans of Razorback baseball to face the 300 pound gorilla in the room. Over the course of Van Horn’s illustrious 40-year career — the past 22 as skipper of Razorback baseball, he has compiled eight division titles in the SEC, three SEC championships, an SEC Tournament title in 2021, 12 NCAA Regional titles and nine trips to Omaha, Nebraska for the annual College World Series.
Only one thing has eluded him. Only one thing is missing from his Hall of Fame resume: A National Championship.
Dave Van Horn's quest for CWS crown weighted down by ghosts of razorbacks past
Among the Arkansas Razorbacks three major sports, only baseball — as storied and blue-blooded as its history suggests under Van Horn and the Jedi Master he apprenticed under and inherited the mantle from just after the turn of the last millennium in Norm DeBriyn — remains without a coveted national crown. When Van Horn assumed the mantle from DeBriyn in 2002 and proceeded to build upon DeBriyn’s own Hall of Fame legacy, it seemed only a matter of time before that promise would be fulfilled.
But now after all his success, whispers sometimes come down from the Hill in Fayetteville that Van Horn’s time may be running out. And since that routine pop up fell to the ground in foul territory between three Razorbacks seven years ago — costing Arkansas and Van Horn a natty while up by a score of 3-2 with two outs in the top of the ninth against Oregon State — those whispers grow louder with each missed opportunity. And like many an ugly rumor, the size of a monstrous lie grows bigger and more ridiculous each time it is repeated.
Friday’s essentially meaningless one-and-done in the 2025 SEC Tournament being just the latest example of how — despite Van Horn’s continued run of excellence at Arkansas — the monkey on the program’s hefty shoulders aren’t going away on their own.
Case and point: The mysterious cases of food poisoning and the routine grounding errors that popped up this weekend, but it didn’t start there of course.
Ghost of Razorbacks Past
After staying at the top of the national polls for most of last season, Dave Van Horn’s Razorbacks seemed to take a page out of Sam Pittman’s football team and Eric Musselman’s last basketball teams at Arkansas and essentially laid down to end the previous school cycle.
And to a fan base haunted and traumatized over the past 60 years by the 2-1 loss to Cal State Fullerton in the 1979 CWS, Steve Atwater’s dropped end zone interception against Jimmy Johnson’s No. 1 Miami Hurricane in 1988, John Wooden’s visit to the scoring table in the 1995 NCAA basketball championship to turn back Nolan Richardson’s chance at a repeat, Brandon Burlsworth stepping on Clint Stoerner’s foot to fumble away a potential national title shot in 1997, Bill Montgomery’s red zone interception against Texas in 1969 that even Rev. Billy Graham’s pregame invocation couldn’t ward off, and last but certainly not least, the internal sabotage of Nolan Richardson’s burgeoning basketball dynasty that was followed by 30 years of irrelevance.
Even Arkansas’ lone national championship in football comes with an asterisk. Despite finishing the year as the lone unbeaten, the Associated Press and the NCAA itself doesn’t recognize Arkansas’ accomplishment to this day because the writers back then chose the champion BEFORE the season even ended!
Of course there are 100 other bad breaks, janky calls — if not outright robbery — from officials and umpires. You all get the picture. When it comes to the three major sports, the quest for national championships at the University of Arkansas carries a heavy burden.
The Mission Ahead
Despite being at or near the top of the polls most of this year, Van Horn’s team ended this season by losing four of six series and going one-and-done at the SEC Tournament. The team’s SEC Player of the Year and top ranked defensive infield uncharacteristically committed fielding errors to start the game, leaving first team SEC pitcher Zach Root unsupported in a 5-2 loss to Ole Miss.
You have to wonder if Van Horn is feeling the weight of the monkey he carries on his back as the University’s most likely to succeed candidate of the Big Three.
With such a heavy burden, a little root work may come in handy if DVH and the 2025 Razorbacks are to prove themselves worthy of getting their venerable sage back to Omaha and another chance at redemption.
The Gorilla in the Room
After analyzing DVH and his team this season, his critics may have a point that their offensive approach relies too much on analytics — not that there’s anything wrong with that! Like most years, Van Horn’s team boasts one of the most potent offenses in the country and their walks-to-strikeout ratio is the best in the country.
What’s missing — at least in clutch, big-game situations is timely hitting. Now there are some who suggest being clutch is a matter of genetics. Some say it’s a matter of luck, but the analytics say there’s no such thing as luck.
What’s holding the Razorbacks back in those crucial moments is the old Jedi mind trick. Presence of mind and having the confidence to assert your will over your doubts and the doubters, over the naysayers, over the ghosts of Razorback past and over the incessant noise coming from every peanut gallery on the internet.
Dave Van Horn and current Razorback basketball coach Calipari both have an analytical approach to offense. In basketball it’s called Hero Ball: Drive to the goal, get a layup/or dunk, kick out to the perimeter for a three-point home run or get bailed out by the ref. This analytics-based approach is en vogue at every level because it’s been proven successful.
It works like a charm in most instances against most competition.
In baseball, the Razorbacks under hitting coach Dave Thompson and former Razorback great Peyton Stovall coined the phrase "Gorilla Ball." You protect the plate and dare the pitcher to make a mistake. Chances are you can get a walk or hit a home run.
Taking these analytics based approaches to offense while playing excellent defense, DVH, Calipari and yes even Eric Musselman have employed these tactics to rightfully carve out names for themselves in their respective careers. The same goes for the Padawans off the DVH coaching tree like Wes Johnson at Georgia and Tony Vitello — whose Tennessee Volunteers happen to be the reigning and defending national champions of college baseball.
HOWEVER, it’s worth noting that even in their combined extremely illustrious careers, DVH, Calipari and Musselman only have one — yes, one national championship between them to show for it.
That one came to Calipari at Kentucky over a decade ago, but that one for Dave Van Horn would be his first, exorcise a lot of ghosts on The Hill and validate beyond any shadow of a doubt his own hall of fame credentials. The question for both is will that formula work at Arkansas? Or will it take something more?
Going Beyond the Gorilla
As a non blue blood or SEC favorite program, Arkansas can’t seem to count on those favorable or borderline calls that more privileged programs can rely on. At the end of the day, remove the favorable calls and the whole analytical house of cards falls apart.
So what’s the solution?
When the time comes, the only way to get the AI generated monkey off your back is to out smart it. Sure. As long as the analytics formula is working, stick with it. But make no mistake: artificial intelligence has its limitations. The human mind and the human heart do not.
At some point in this quest to break through for a national championship, and reverse the curse hanging over Arkansas' big three, Dave Van Horn’s Razorbacks will have to do what Nolan Richardson’s teams did and defy the negative expectations.
In other words, be smart enough to do whatever works and whatever the situation calls for because sometimes the home run, walk or burst formula results in looking at too many called strike threes. Analytics is a tool — not the whole arsenal. In their upcoming runs, DVH and John Calipari would do well to remember that if they are to overcome the 300 pound gorilla standing in their way.
The mid-range game in basketball, the running game in football and small ball in baseball still have a place in today’s game. They can throw off the algorithms that insist new school analytics are the only way.
Sure. Gorilla ball works best when you’re bigger and stronger than the competition. You can wait for a subpar pitcher to be unable to find the strike zone under pressure. You can count on them making a mistake and serving up fastball right down the middle or hanging a curve ball out over the plate. But at the championship level, the pitchers you face are more likely to hit their marks.
To beat an opponent that is just as talented and a team that's just deep as you are, you may have to “go with a pitch” on the edge of the strike zone, slap a seeing eye single with the bases loaded instead of waiting for that pitcher to make a mistake. You may have to lay down a well-timed, well-placed bunt to score that go ahead run. Those small things can make all the difference in big game situations.
Swinging Smarter — not Always Harder
To give you another current AI generated analogy, how do 100 men beat a gorilla? It’s all good when the gorilla is on your side or you’re the gorilla, but when that gorilla turns on you and hops on your back, you beat him by defying expectations.
Those of us who pre-date the turn of the last millennium know it goes even deeper than analytics. Like most good teams trying to breakthrough for their first championship run, you typically need Lady Luck on your side, and make no mistake: Dave Van Horn’s Razorbacks are due.
After watching one run after another get more than their hearts broken, you would hope sooner or later one of the hundred would end the carnage by pulling out a dart gun or a banana peel.
How do all those gorillas get in the zoo in the first place? It wasn’t because the gorilla was over powered. It was because the gorilla was outsmarted. Most people defer their thinking to machines these days, but good luck trying to blow up a death star with that — my young Jedi friends.
And whether it’s John Calipari or DVH, if they are going to win a national championship at Arkansas, they will have to prove not only are they better — but smarter and yes. Well fear not gentlemen, the good news is we’re due for some luck and we just may have Lady Luck on our side for once. Either way, just be ready to do your part when that moment of decision comes.
Dave Van Horn’s Razorbacks will get their chance to prove they have what it takes to break that generational curse that has haunted the Big 3 Razorback programs for at least 30 years now. The advice to the rogue squadron about to embark on this year's fateful mission is whatever you do: Don’t quit. Even when the analytical computers are out of answers, find the answer within yourselves.
WPS! Go Razorbacks!