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.
