Knight tapped to open for Hogs in Fayetteville Regional

FAYETTEVILLE — Dave Van Horn spells respect K-n-i-g-h-t.

So, it’s Blaine Knight today leading as the ace of Van Horn’s top-seeded Arkansas Razorbacks (39-17) playing against coach Ryan Folmar’s fourth-seeded Oral Roberts Golden Eagles (39-18) in today’s 2 p.m. start of the four-team double-elimination NCAA baseball regional at Arkansas’ Baum Stadium.

Second-seeded Southern Mississippi (43-16) and third-seeded Dallas Baptist (40-19) clash at 7 p.m. with a 2 p.m. loser’s bracket game and 7 p.m. winner’s bracket game set for Saturday. Tomorrow’s games feed into Sunday afternoon’s loser’s bracket final before the championship game Sunday night. If necessary, there will be a winner take all championship game Monday for the right to advance to next week’s super regionals whose winners advance as the elite eight playing for the national championship at the College World Series in Omaha.

In past regionals, Van Horn sometimes has “pitched off,” as they say, and started his No. 2 or No. 3 starter against a lower-seeded opening foe to save his ace. But Van Horn, even with his Southeastern Conference West co-champion Razorbacks, a No. 5 regional seed assured of hosting the Greenville Regional winner in next week’s best two out of three super regional if they win this Fayetteville Regional, asserts there’s no looking past Tulsa-based Oral Roberts, the Summit League regular season and tournament champion.

Oral Roberts historically plays Arkansas tough, including in last year’s Fayetteville Regional. Arkansas took a hard-fought 3-0 victory over the Golden Eagles before the Razorbacks clawed out of the loser’s bracket to lose the winner-take-all championship game against Missouri State.

Right-hander Knight (10-0, 2.78 ERA) is set to pitch today with No. 2 starter Kacey Murphy (74, 3.15) set for Saturday. Van Horn threw Murphy in Arkansas’ first game in the 2018 SEC Baseball Tournament last week in Hoover, Ala., because Knight threw more pitches in the regular season finale series at Georgia (37-19)

“Respect and not looking past anybody,” Van Horn said. “Oral Roberts has a great team. Very well coached. A lot of players back from last year and they know how to win. We were thinking Blaine all along unless something changed and he wasn’t ready to go because he threw behind Murphy in the (SEC) tournament. But when he felt good to go it was a done deal.”

Knight was asked what it means to start the opener.

“I mean I’m excited about it, but it’s not any bigger than any other game of the year,” Knight replied Thursday. “Yeah, it’s a regional, but it’s still another game. You’ve got to win one game at a time, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Van Horn anticipated Oral Roberts lefty Miguel Ausua would start today after Ausua yielded just one earned run through 6 1/3 in last year’s 3-0 regional loss to Arkansas behind Trevor Stephan, who has since turned pro. Folmar said Thursday at Baum that his other ace, right-hander Justin McGregor (9-0, 2.99) will start against Arkansas with Ausua (8-1, 3.27) starting Saturday.

Regardless of the pitching opponent, Knight said it’s the Golden Eagles hitters he must retire.

“They can swing it,” Knight said. “That’s what they are known for. I know they have that lefty from last year who throw for them against us and held us down for awhile. I assume he is going to go again.

Infielders Cal Hernandez, .336, and Nick Roark, .322, return from last year’s Golden Eagles, and powerful freshman Spencer Henson leads ORU hitting .368 with nine home runs and 54 RBIs.

Knight was 8-4 with a 3.28 ERA last year, but he said adding a curveball to his fastball, slider and changeup helped him improve.

“The curveball definitely has made me more effective,” Knight said. “Because everybody attacks me early in the counts with the fast ball the majority of the time. All my pitch speed differences aren’t enough between the fastball, slider and the changeup to keep them off of it. They were fouling it off or making contact one way or another. So, having the curveball being as slow as it is, it allows me to use my fast ball a lot more.”

Regardless of how well he pitches, it seems a cinch in this afternoon’s projected heat that Knight will require relief. Knight said Matt Cronin, Jake Reindl, Barrett Loseke and Kole Ramage are absolutely a source of relief.

“Last year, you got past the starters, and it was a flip of the coin that day because you didn’t know what that guy was going to do.,” Knight said. “This year, we feel really confident with Reindl, confident in Loseke, Ramage, Cronin. We have a handful of guys we know we can go to that are going to get us some innings when needed in long relief, or they can come in and close it out either one.”

Whoever awaits Arkansas Saturday looms large.

Coach Scott Berry’s Southern Miss won both the Conference USA regular season and tournament championships. The Golden Eagles opened the season in February sweeping three from the Mississippi State Bulldogs (31-25), who later swept Arkansas and SEC regular season champion/national top seed Florida (42-18) in a three-game SEC series.

Coach Dan Heefner’s Dallas Baptist Patriots have advanced to the NCAA Tournaments the past five years and finished runner-up to always tough Missouri State in both the Missouri Valley Conference regular season and tournament.