FAYETTEVILLE — Isaiah Campbell realizes he did not live up to the expectations of Arkansas fans last season, but what fans may not realize is that Campbell had set much higher goals for himself.
“I didn’t hit my expectations at all,” he said. “I didn’t come close.”
The right-handed pitcher had hoped to be an All-American and a high-round draft pick in 2018 and to be playing professional baseball by now.
But Campbell is back in Fayetteville for a rare fourth season in college baseball. A redshirt season for bone spurs in 2017 provides him with another year of negotiating leverage in the draft, so he is one of the only holdovers from a 2015 signing class that included Blaine Knight, Grant Koch, Kacey Murphy, Eric Cole and others who as juniors were so instrumental in a national runner-up finish last season.