Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports
With baseball over, it’s time to start fully looking ahead to football.
This week in offseason power rankings are the top games of opening weekend. ESPN has their rankings for the SEC’s season openers. The Arkansas/Louisiana Tech matchup won’t get too many people excited, but there are some really good matchups elsewhere. The weekend features two SEC/Pac-12 games, and three SEC/ACC games. Arkansas’ season opener isn’t headline material, but its definitely better than Florida taking on UMass.
Satellite camps have been the talk of the offseason this year and Arkansas has had plenty to say about it. There were plans to have one of those camps in Jerry World this summer but it looks like that camp won’t be happening. Texas A&M-Commerce was originally slatted to host, but they left and the Hogs dropped the camp all together. Arkansas still have their satellite camp in Little Rock ready to go in a couple of weeks.
Bringing up this baseball season isn’t fun, and after today we can go back to pretending it never happened. Dave Van Horn wrapped up the season with his final press conference of the year and you can read this recap of it. He talked about the process of finding a new pitching coach, which included some very eager agents calling. There is also a look ahead to who will be available for next season. The draft could be kind to the Hogs this year, Van Horn says he is optimistic players like Carson Shaddy and Luke Bonfield will be back and the young pitching staff can improve.
Arkansas and LSU set aside their rivalry, at least the mascots have, after the news that Mike VI was diagnosed with cancer. Tusk and his team sent flowers to LSU to wish Mike well. The article has an update on the veterinary team’s treatments for him, which will hopefully keep one of the most notable live mascots in college sports well for as long as possible.