Knight leads Hogs to Omaha
FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas’ Knight of All-American honor, 12-0 junior right-hander Blaine Knight proved himself a prophet last year.
As a 21-year old Major League draft-eligible prospect, Knight made it plain in 2017 to the pro teams he wanted to return to Arkansas for his junior year and the 2018 College World Series berth in Omaha, Neb., he believed these Razorbacks (44-19) could achieve.
Indeed, they achieved it with Knight the scheduled starter in Sunday’s 1 p.m. first-round game against the Texas Longhorns at TD Ameritrade Park Omaha. The game is scheduled to be shown on ESPN (Resort Channel 30).
“The letter he wrote last year, that was pretty awesome,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said Thursday before the Razorbacks flew from Fayetteville to Omaha. “When he tweeted that out, I think he said something about ‘See you in Omaha,’ and here we are. He’s getting rewarded, and he’s going to get the ball.”
Even greater are the considerable times this season Knight’s competitive juices, pitching knowledge and versatility have overcome not all of his pitches working as he would like, yet either winning the game or keeping it competitively close for the reliever replacing him.
“I mean, he’s been great,” Van Horn said. “He’s even been good when he hasn’t been good, you know. He keeps us in the game, and we find a way to keep it close. He got a few no-decisions.
“We’ve come back and took the lead after we’d already taken him out, and we hadn’t hit yet, and we knew he wasn’t going back out, and we get him another win.”
Great defense can augment not so great stuff. Knight works so quickly even when in a jam that defenders don’t rock back on their heels as they are prone to do against a pitcher deliberating at a snail’s pace when in a jam.
“When Blaine’s on the mound we seem to play pretty good defense,” Van Horn said. “He keeps us in every game.”
And keeps the bullpen rested for the next two games of a threegame Southeastern Conference weekend, says third year sophomore No. 3 starter Isaiah Campbell.
“He’s just a competitor, “Campbell said. “He faces the best every night in the SEC and gives us six or seven innings. That’s what you need. If your Friday night guy goes that long and you only have to use one guy out of the pen, it saves the pitching for the rest of the weekend. So he’s been huge.”
Geopfert leaves Arkansas for Tennessee
Nearly all of Travis Geopfert’s professional life has seen the former decathlete either coached by or working with Chris Bucknam.
That changed Thursday with Geopfert on Friday becoming Tennessee’s associate head coach in charge of field events for both the men’s and women’s consolidated track and field programs. Geopfert became an assistant coach under Bucknam at Northern Iowa before rejoining Bucknam at Arkansas as the Razorbacks’ field events coach in 2010 after a one-year head coaching position at Northern Iowa as
it underwent track budgets.
At Arkansas, Geopfert coached three times NCAA long jump champion and Bowerman Award winning U.S. OIympian Jarrion Lawson, NCAA triple jump champion and Jamaican Olympian Clive Pullen and Kevin Lazas, the men’s program’s only NCAA champion heptathlete.
Arkansas men’s coach Bucknam said Geopfert’s decision to leave was not a surprise.
“Nothing surprises me in this business,” he said. “We’ve been together a long time, and I try to give the best advice I can, but guys have to make their own decisions, and he felt it was the best move for him and his family. He did a great job for us here, and he’s going to be missed. No question about that. But we’re going to move on and hire another great coach.”
How soon does that process start?
“We think the job will get posted today,” Bucknam said Friday. “And we’ll open it up to a national search and see who has interest. You know some out there you hope express interest in the job, but there might be some out there that we haven’t thought of either. We’ll open it up and see what happens.”