HOOVER, Ala. — First pitch was supposed to start at 4 p.m. ET. It was delayed an hour and 32 minutes and started at 5:32 p.m. ET.
Texas is ranked in the Top 25 rankings from May 18, published by D1Baseball.com, at No. 5 in the country, and Arkansas is at No. 12. Texas entered Friday’s game with a strikeout-to-walk ratio ranked fourth in the country at 3.48; Arkansas ranked 10th at 3.03. By the bottom of the second inning, all of that was footnote material.
Arkansas did not hesitate to get on the board early on Friday afternoon. Shortstop Cam Kozeal drilled a two-run home run over the left-center field wall — his 19th of the year — scoring Damian Ruiz, and the Razorbacks were up 2-0.
CAMDEN KOZEAL GETS US GOING pic.twitter.com/NkqQjhADc1
— Arkansas Baseball (@RazorbackBSB) May 22, 2026
A few moments later, Nolan Souza drilled an RBI single up the middle, scoring third baseman TJ Pompey to extend the lead to 3-0.
Texas got on the board in the bottom of the first inning, when Adrian Rodriguez drew a bases-loaded walk and Anthony Pack Jr. came in to score to make it 3-1.
got one back ?#HookEm | @arod_2024 pic.twitter.com/H7StT9e77B
— Texas Baseball (@TexasBaseball) May 22, 2026
In the top of the second inning, the Razorbacks broke the game open. Kozeal torched a 450-foot three-run home run over the center field wall, the ball striking the top of the SEC backdrop, scoring Reese Robinett and Ruiz to jump out to a 6-1 lead.
450 FEET TO DEAD CENTER ? pic.twitter.com/qNidlOI8Ax
— Arkansas Baseball (@RazorbackBSB) May 22, 2026
By that point, the Razorbacks had a 6-1 lead and Texas starter Cody Howard had been chased after two innings. By the end of the night, they had an 8-1 win, a ticket to Saturday’s SEC Tournament semifinal against Auburn, and an answer to the three-game sweep Texas put on them in Austin in April.
The No. 7-seeded Arkansas Razorbacks (38-19) advance to Saturday’s 4:30 p.m. ET SEC Tournament semifinal against No. 6 seed Auburn. The No. 2 seed Texas Longhorns (40-13) — the Big 12 transplants in their second SEC Tournament — go home one-and-done.
It was, in every measurable sense, revenge. It was also, in head coach Dave Van Horn’s own postgame telling, almost a disaster.
The Dietz situation: sick, then struck
Hunter Dietz, the All-SEC left-hander and MLB Pipeline’s No. 18 overall draft prospect, was Arkansas’s announced Game 11 starter. The Razorbacks had built their Friday plan around him. By Van Horn’s account in the postgame, the plan was already half-broken before first pitch.
“Found out he was sick about five minutes before the game started,” Van Horn said. “We didn’t know if he was gonna give us but one or two innings anyway.”
Then came the line drive. Casey Borba — Texas’s hottest hitter coming into the tournament, with five home runs over his previous five regular-season games — rifled a comebacker that struck Dietz on the shin. The Arkansas trainer and pitching coach Matt Hobbs walked to the mound. Dietz was visibly shaken. Van Horn followed.
“Probably more than anything,” Van Horn said, “the conversation was: please don’t be broken.”
The conversation was about the rest of May. Arkansas, with a likely NCAA Regional host bid pending Monday’s selection show, needed Dietz available next weekend more than it needed him for one more inning Friday. Dietz exited after 21 pitches. Texas had loaded the bases with three walks and a single. Arkansas, in the first inning of a single-elimination quarterfinal, was suddenly leaning on the bullpen for the rest of the night.
Then Van Horn’s other surprise: freshman right-hander Steele Eaves had been sick too.
“He wasn’t at the ballpark the other day because he was sick,” Van Horn said. “We sent him home. And tonight Dietz was sick. We didn’t know till right before the game started. We actually — those two were rooming together. We took Dietz and got him his own room two days ago, so he wasn’t gonna be around it, but he might’ve been around it too much.”
Arkansas had been in the same Hoover hotel for ten straight nights at that point. The illness moved through the rooming list anyway.
Eaves came in cold. He got the inning-ending out with the bases loaded — striking out Ethan Mendoza on a flyout to short left — and Arkansas escaped the first holding a 3-1 lead.
He never gave it back.
The Kozeal blast
The second-inning home run was the one that broke the game open. Howard struck out Carter Rutenbar to start the inning. Reese Robinett worked a full-count walk. Damian Ruiz singled through the right side. With two on and two outs, Howard threw an 0-2 fastball at 95 miles per hour — dead center, belt-high, with no breaking ball sequenced off it.
Kozeal smashed it 450 feet to dead center, off the bat at 111 mph. The ball struck the top of the SEC backdrop near the center field speaker on its way out of the park.
“It was smoked,” Van Horn said. “I don’t know if it was coming down when it hit that speaker out there. It started — it was a ball hit out dead center here, and it just kept right on going.”
Asked whether he’d ever seen a ball hit like that at the Hoover Met, Van Horn answered in a single syllable: “No.”
The three-run shot made it 6-1. It was Kozeal’s 20th home run of the season — coming on the heels of the 19th he had hit one inning earlier. Combined with a fifth-inning RBI single, Kozeal finished 3-for-4 with one walk, two runs, and 5 RBIs. In three games at the Hoover Met as a Razorback, he is now 5-for-11 with three walks, five runs, seven RBI, and four home runs.
“That was a momentum changer right there, in my opinion,” Van Horn said of the second blast. “Especially since we just lost our starting pitcher.”
Kozeal, in the postgame, was matter-of-fact about the approach.
“It’s a really fun tournament to play in,” he said. “You get to face new pitchers and just go out there and play and have fun. It’s win or go home, so you go out there balls out and just compete.”
Asked what’s been different at the plate this weekend: “Just seeing the ball, just trusting teammates, just trying to score runs. It’s the time of the year where I think being the more aggressive team will win, and we just wanna keep playing.”
Gaeckle and the bullpen masterclass
By the time Texas got to its third turn through the lineup, Arkansas had its closer on the mound.
Gabe Gaeckle — the junior right-hander and MLB Pipeline No. 86 draft prospect — entered in the fourth inning and threw six. In every measurable sense, it was the best version of him.
The Texas side of the night was almost entirely scoreless from the moment Gaeckle warmed up. The Razorback bullpen line for the night: Steele Eaves and Gabe Gaeckle combined for 8 1/3 innings, zero earned runs, three hits, eight strikeouts. Texas was held hitless from the second inning through the seventh. The Longhorns scattered four singles across the night and never put a runner past first base after the first inning.
“That was about as good as it can go, really,” Van Horn said of Gaeckle. “I’m a little superstitious. I don’t want to know how hard they’re throwing. But one just kind of jumped out of his hand. I glanced to the left. I’m like, oh my goodness — it said 97. I’d seen that this year.”
Pitching coach Matt Hobbs had told reporters Gaeckle was landing his fastball at the bottom of the strike zone and working his slider off it. Gaeckle himself agreed.
“I just think I was able to throw all my pitches for strikes,” Gaeckle said. “And land the off-speed when they were probably hunting fastball. So that worked out for me.”
Van Horn saw something more layered.
“He kind of pitched backwards too,” Van Horn said. “He pitched off that breaking ball, is what I saw. They started trying to sit on something off-speed. He started zipping them.”
Schlossnagle, on the Texas side, was direct about it.
“Everything he threw was at the bottom,” the Longhorns coach said of Gaeckle. “When he is riding that fastball at the bottom of the strike zone and you’ve got the hard slider, that’s what — guys like Robbins, you’re just chasing it because you just don’t see it.”
Aiden Robbins — the Texas right fielder and the staff Schlossnagle was trying hardest to protect for next week — finished 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.
Gaeckle, asked about Eaves coming in for the first-inning emergency, gave his teammate the credit.
“Honestly, I wasn’t watching too much. I was getting loose,” Gaeckle said. “But throwing strikes like he always does, mixing — he’s been outstanding for us the whole year. So it was good to see.”
Carter Rutenbar and the fifth-inning insurance
The Razorbacks added two more runs in the fifth that turned the game from a competitive 6-1 into a deflating 8-1. Freshman infielder Carter Rutenbar’s RBI single off Texas freshman Kaleb Rogers scored Pompey from third. Reese Robinett’s groundout to short brought in Souza right after.
Kozeal, asked specifically about Rutenbar in the postgame, framed the bigger pattern.
“Just keeping the game simple. Not trying to do too much,” Kozeal said. “Just see the ball, be on time, and hit it hard. Always have an attainable goal to just go up there and help the team win and hit the ball hard. Keep the game simple, especially towards the end of the year.”
The Razorbacks out-hit Texas 11-4 on the night. Arkansas drew five walks and was hit by three pitches. Three doubles, two home runs.
“We put together a couple good innings, we pitched it great,” Van Horn said. “It was a good winning formula.”
What Texas takes home
Jim Schlossnagle, in his second SEC Tournament since Texas joined the league last year, has now lost twice in two tries at Hoover. The Longhorns came in as the No. 2 seed, the conference’s runner-up by record, and a heavy favorite to host an NCAA Regional next weekend. They will still host. But they will host with this taste in their mouth.
“This certainly doesn’t taste very good right now,” Schlossnagle said. “I can promise you anybody on that bus, this doesn’t taste good. So we need to play better next week.”
Schlossnagle had used the week between Texas’s regular-season finale and Friday’s game to give his top arms — including the back of the rotation — extra rest, choosing to pitch lower-leverage arms in Hoover so the rotation would be fresh for next weekend. It is the same approach he ran at Texas A&M in 2024, when the Aggies reached the College World Series final, and again last year at Texas when the program went one-and-done at Hoover. Three SEC Tournaments. Three pitching-off plans.
“If you tell me I gotta lose a game to keep Aiden Robbins healthy next weekend, well then you gotta do that,” Schlossnagle said. “Not that we tried to lose, but you just gotta massage it different ways, I guess. And if everybody’s feeling awesome, super awesome on the mound, then maybe we run ’em out there for 70, 80 pitches.”
Cody Howard, the Texas starter who hadn’t started since 2024, exited after the second inning having allowed six runs on five hits with five strikeouts. The next several Texas pitchers — Luke Harrison, Dylan Volantis, Kaleb Rogers, Ethan Walker, Brett Crossland, Michael Winter, and Cal Higgins — combined for the rest of the game. Harrison and Volantis each threw two scoreless innings; Volantis struck out four of the seven batters he faced.
Carson Tinney, Texas’s All-SEC catcher, finished 0-for-3 with two strikeouts.
“They came more ready to play than us,” Tinney said in the postgame. “Came out firing on all cylinders. And you saw that active in the first half-inning. I don’t think it was a lack of excitement or a lack of competitiveness. I think it was just one of those days where we didn’t show up ready to play.”
Luke Harrison, the redshirt senior left-hander making his first relief appearance in two years, said the takeaway is forward-looking.
“I was fired up to get to pitch this weekend in any kind of role. It was good to be down there with the fellas in the bullpen and come out there and do something I haven’t done in a little bit,” Harrison said. “It’s just a good reminder that the game doesn’t change. You just gotta go do you, and the rest will take care of itself.”
Schlossnagle, asked about Arkansas’s quality: “They’re pitching it really well. I don’t know if they’re getting their Aloy back or not, but just the physical team that knows how to win, you know — and especially if they get to play at home, you know, look out. Good luck winning a regional in that place.”
The “Aloy” Schlossnagle name-checked is Kuhio Aloy — the Maui native, brother of 2025 Golden Spikes Award winner Wehiwa Aloy, and one of three native-born Hawaiian student-athletes on Arkansas’s roster (along with Honolulu’s Nolan Souza and Maika Niu). Even the opposing coach in the postgame mentioned him by name as the absent power threat Arkansas could still get back. See our Saturday semifinals “Who to Cheer For” guide for more on the Hawaiian baseball pipeline at Arkansas.
The grind
By Van Horn’s count, the Razorbacks now have 17 Quad 1 wins — tied for the national lead with UCLA, Georgia, and Georgia Tech. They have 19 SEC wins, 80+ home runs as a team, and 80+ stolen bases. They’ve won seven of ten conference series. They opened the SEC Tournament unranked in some bracketology projections; they are now two wins from the championship game.
“We got 17 Quad 1 wins. Does anybody know that?” Van Horn said in the postgame. “Nobody knows that.”
The Hoover Met has now been the Razorbacks’ home base for ten consecutive nights. The rotation got sick. The closer carried six innings. The freshman cleanup arm came in cold after being sent home with the same illness 48 hours earlier and threw strikes. The shortstop hit a baseball off the top of the SEC backdrop.
Texas, the No. 2 seed, packs the bus.
What’s next
The Razorbacks face No. 6 seed Auburn in Saturday’s SEC Tournament semifinal at 4:30 p.m. ET on the SEC Network. (See our Saturday semifinals guide for the full preview, including a deep “Who to Cheer For” breakdown of all four remaining teams.) The two teams split their regular-season series in 2026: Arkansas won 2-1 in Fayetteville in April, Auburn took 2-1 at home in May.
Van Horn was non-committal about Arkansas’s Saturday starter.
“We don’t know where we’re starting yet,” he said. “I’ll talk to Coach Hobbs and we’ll discuss it. Obviously if Dietz would’ve thrown five to six today and we’d had that lead, we’d have gone to somebody else. And we would’ve started Gaeckle tomorrow if we win. But I told the coach — they have a good offense, we know who’s in that bullpen waiting to come in. And if they start making a run, we just decided: let’s just pitch. So to answer your question, I’m not sure. But we do have guys that pitched the other day that will now be available. We can piece it together. Whoever we start probably won’t plan on pitching it very long.”
A 92-minute weather delay. A starting pitcher knocked out by a line drive after being told he was sick five minutes before first pitch. A backup starter who’d been sent home with the same illness 48 hours earlier. A 450-foot home run that hit the top of the SEC backdrop.
The Razorbacks are still here. Texas is not.
By the Numbers
Score: Arkansas 8, Texas 1 (FINAL)
Hits: Arkansas 11, Texas 4
Errors: Arkansas 1, Texas 0
Left on base: Arkansas 9, Texas 6
First pitch: 5:32 p.m. ET (delayed 1 hour, 32 minutes from scheduled 4 p.m. ET)
Arkansas now: 38-19 (17-13 SEC), advances to Saturday’s semifinal vs. Auburn at 4:30 p.m. ET on SEC Network
Texas now: 40-13 (18-12 SEC), eliminated; awaits Monday selection show as projected national seed and NCAA Regional host
D1Baseball rankings (May 18): Texas No. 5, Arkansas No. 12
K/BB ratio entering Friday: Texas 3.48 (4th nationally), Arkansas 3.03 (10th nationally)
Arkansas pitching: Hunter Dietz 0.2 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 0 K (left after taking a line drive off the shin). Steele Eaves (W) 2.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K. Gabe Gaeckle 6.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K.
Texas pitching: Cody Howard (L) 2.0 IP, 5 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 1 BB, 5 K. Luke Harrison 2.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K. Kaleb Rogers 0.1 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 0 K. Ethan Walker 0.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K. Brett Crossland 0.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K. Dylan Volantis 2.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K. Michael Winter 1.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 K. Cal Higgins 1.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 K.
Arkansas hitting leaders: Cam Kozeal 3-for-4, 2 HR (19th and 20th), 5 RBI, 2 R, 1 BB. Nolan Souza 2-for-4, 1 RBI, 1 R, 1 BB. Maika Niu 2-for-4, 2B, 1 BB. TJ Pompey 1-for-5, 2B, 1 R, 1 SB. Damian Ruiz 1-for-3, 1 R, 1 BB, 1 HBP. Carter Rutenbar 1-for-4, 1 RBI, 1 HBP. Reese Robinett 0-for-3, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 1 HBP.
Texas hitting leaders: Casey Borba 2-for-4. Ethan Mendoza 1-for-3, 1 BB. Aiden Robbins 0-for-4, 3 K. Carson Tinney 0-for-3, 1 BB, 2 K. Anthony Pack Jr. 0-for-4, 1 K. Temo Becerra 0-for-3, 2 BB. Adrian Rodriguez 0-for-2, 2 BB, 1 RBI (bases-loaded walk in the 1st).
Key moment: Cam Kozeal’s 450-foot home run to center field in the second inning. The ball, off the bat at 111 mph, struck the top of the SEC backdrop near the center field speaker on its way out of the park. Dave Van Horn said afterward he’d never seen a ball hit like that at the ballpark.
Big-picture note: Arkansas has now stacked two consecutive SEC Tournament wins (Tennessee 8-4, Texas 8-1) by a combined score of 16-5. The Razorbacks have 17 Quad 1 wins on the season — tied for the national lead, by Van Horn’s count, with UCLA, Georgia, and Georgia Tech.
For more on the 2026 SEC Tournament
- Game 11 Recap: Arkansas 8, Texas 1
- Game 12 Recap: Auburn 7, Texas A&M 0
- Game 10 Recap: Florida 13, Alabama 3 (8 inn., run rule)
- Game 9 Recap: Georgia 5, Mississippi State 3
- Game 8 Recap: Auburn 3, LSU 1
- Game 7 Recap: Arkansas 8, Tennessee 4
- Game 6 Recap: Florida 8, Vanderbilt 3
- Game 5 Recap: Mississippi State 12, Missouri 2 (7 inn.)
- Game 4 Recap: LSU 6, Oklahoma 2
- Game 3 Recap: Tennessee 11, South Carolina 6
- Game 2 Recap: Vanderbilt 8, Kentucky 5
- Game 1 Recap: Missouri 10, Ole Miss 8
- How to Watch: Friday Quarterfinals
- How to Watch: Original Tournament Preview
2026 SEC Baseball Tournament Schedule
All times Eastern.
Tuesday, May 19 — First Round (SEC Network)
Game 1: Missouri 10, Ole Miss 8
Game 2: Vanderbilt 8, Kentucky 5
Game 3: Tennessee 11, South Carolina 6
Game 4: LSU 6, Oklahoma 2
Wednesday, May 20 — Second Round (SEC Network)
Game 5: Mississippi State 12, Missouri 2 (7 inn.)
Game 6: Florida 8, Vanderbilt 3
Game 7: Arkansas 8, Tennessee 4
Game 8: Auburn 3, LSU 1
Thursday, May 21 — Quarterfinals (SEC Network)
Game 9: Georgia 5, Mississippi State 3
Game 10: Florida 13, Alabama 3 (8 inn., run rule)
Friday, May 22 — Quarterfinals (SEC Network)
Game 11: Arkansas 8, Texas 1
Game 12: Auburn 7, Texas A&M 0
Saturday, May 23 — Semifinals (SEC Network)
Game 13: No. 1 Georgia vs. No. 5 Florida — 1 p.m.
Game 14: No. 7 Arkansas vs. No. 6 Auburn — 4:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 24 — Championship (ABC)
Game 15: Winner Game 13 vs. Winner Game 14 — 2 p.m.
