On the road again

Arkansas will play its regular-season SEC series finale on the road for the seventh consecutive year.

The Razorbacks last played at home to end the SEC schedule in 2011 when they won two of three games against Ole Miss.

During the previous six years the Razorbacks wrapped up SEC play at Tennessee, Auburn, Missouri, Georgia, Mississippi State and Texas A&M.

“It’ll be that way again next year, too, because the way it works is that it’s all about finals,” Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said. “So we play the first series at home and then we play the last series on the road.

“I’m not in love with it. I’d rather play the first series on the road and finish at home. But it is what it is.”

SEC teams also play an unbalanced schedule because they face 10 of 13 conference opponents.

Arkansas’ four SEC East opponents — Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Kentucky — are a combined 64-44 in conference games. The East teams the Razorbacks don’t play — Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Missouri — are 34-47.

“Everybody can make a case for they don’t like where they start or where they finish or having to play this team and not that team from the other division,” Van Horn said. “You never know who’s going to be good. You’re playing all the top teams and not playing the bottom team in that division.

“It’s interesting, so what do you do? Do you play the whole league? You have one nonconference weekend and then you go into conference play?”

A full round-robin schedule would mean playing 39 SEC games.

“Then we’d just all beat each other up and we wouldn’t have anything left,” Van Horn said. “Throwing in nine more games, it’d be crazy.”