Auburn’s softball team is looking to return to form this weekend as it heads to Fayetteville, Ark., to take on No. 3 Arkansas.
After winning its first SEC series of the year against Kentucky, Auburn has dropped back-to-back series to Oklahoma and Missouri via sweeps. For a team like the Tigers, which is looking to break a conference losing streak, the Razorbacks are an extremely tough matchup.
Arkansas has a 19-2 home record this season but has been inconsistent in SEC play, posting a 5-4 conference record through its first three series.
Heading into conference play, Arkansas sat at an impressive 25-1 record, with its only loss coming early in the season against No. 25 Virginia. The Razorbacks were able to rack up key wins during this stretch, including run-rule victories against No. 21 Clemson and Kansas. Perhaps their most impressive feat was a four-game stretch in mid-February in which they did not allow a single run.
Since then, however, the Razorbacks have found things much more difficult in conference play. They began the season with a home series win against No. 11 Georgia before losing a series to No. 4 Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In their most recent matchup at home against No. 6 Florida, the Razorbacks took two out of three games to win the series.
Arkansas’s offense has been its calling card, with the team combining to bat .374 this season — the second-best mark in the SEC. The Razorbacks' offense is extremely contact-oriented, ranking third in the SEC in total hits (339), despite having played only 34 games so far, the second-fewest of any team in the conference.
Leading Arkansas’s offense is the hard-slugging duo of freshman Brinli Bain and senior Tianna Bell. Bain’s .427 batting average marks a team-best, and her .578 on-base percentage ranks in the top-10 in the SEC. Her 13 doubles this season are also the second-most in the conference.
Bell has been outstanding all-around, leading the Razorbacks in hits (45) and RBIs (41), while also hitting 10 home runs this season.
Arkansas’s pitching has been solid, as well, though not as impressive as its offense to this point in the year. The team’s 2.60 ERA ranks sixth-best in the SEC, and they sit near the middle of the conference in nearly every notable pitching statistic.
Senior Robyn Herron has been the ace of the staff, posting a 1.73 ERA and 10 wins through her first 15 games of the season. The lefty has excelled at missing bats, as her total of 98 strikeouts is more than 60 ahead of anyone else on her team.
Auburn is likely to put up some runs against the Razorbacks’ pitching staff, but the deciding factor in the series will be whether the Tigers can hold off what has been a dangerous Arkansas offense.
The Tigers will face Arkansas in a Saturday-Sunday-Monday series, with game one's first pitch set for 4 p.m. CDT.
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Jonathan is a freshman majoring in industrial and systems engineering. He started with The Plainsman in the fall of 2025.
