FAYETTEVILLE -- A three-game sweep of No. 2 Mississippi State has moved the University of Arkansas baseball team to the top of the SEC West standings.
"Better than being in second," Razorbacks Coach Dave Van Horn said. "So we'll take it."
Arkansas (30-10, 12-6) is just ahead of Texas A&M (29-12-1, 11-6-1) in the West. The Aggies have a 2-2 tie with Missouri on their record because the game was stopped after 10 innings due to a travel curfew for the Tigers.
LSU is third (26-15, 11-7) in the West with Mississippi State (32-9, 10-8), Ole Miss (27-14, 10-8) and Auburn (26-14, 10-8) still in contention.
The Razorbacks have two SEC sweeps this season -- taking three games from Missouri and Mississippi State. They won their series at Auburn and at Alabama 2-1, and lost their series at home to Ole Miss and at Vanderbilt 2-1.
Arkansas has a home series against LSU on May 9-11 and finishes the regular season at Texas A&M on May 16-18. The Razorbacks also have a home series against Tennessee (30-11, 9-9) this weekend and at Kentucky (20-20, 4-14) on May 3-5.
Georgia (33-8, 13-5) has the SEC's best conference record.
"It's like I told the players, you don't really look at the standings this time of year," Van Horn said. "You just keep playing and you try to grab a win whenever you get one.
"The league is so tight. You look at it going into this weekend, there's four or five teams within one or two games of each other out of seven. It can flip on you real quick."
The Razorbacks are listening to their coach about leading the West with four SEC series remaining.
"It's definitely a great feeling, but there is so much more work to do," third baseman Jacob Nesbit said. "So it's kind of like rinse and repeat.
"We've got another really good team coming in here this week in Tennessee. We've got to take care of them. "
Arkansas became the first team to sweep a three-game series against Mississippi State this season after beating the Bulldogs 5-3, 12-5 and 10-2.
The Bulldogs were the only team to sweep a three-game series from the Razorbacks last season when Arkansas was ranked No. 3 nationally.
"Coach Van Horn says the SEC is kind of like a league like no other," Razorbacks DH and first baseman Jordan McFarland said. "Rankings don't matter so much -- like we saw last year. We got swept by [the Bulldogs] in Starkville, and we were ranked top five and they weren't ranked at all."
The Bulldogs brought a six-game winning streak into their series at Arkansas.
"Mississippi State was in first place coming up here, feeling pretty good, and it didn't go good," Van Horn said. "We talk about that stuff.
"You have to keep working, and you can't think you have it all figured out, because you don't."
Sports on 04/22/2019