Flight help - MSY to Little Rock

Have to be in Little Rock on November 9th to do some teaching. It's for a non-profit so I'm trying to keep their costs down (I'm volunteering my time, but they are covering my travel expenses).

Plan was to fly in night before and fly out that night. Doesn't look like there is a lot of options for flights. I found a flight for $400 round trip but to make it work I need to fly in Wed night and fly out Fri morning at like 545 am, this is on Southwest. (that airline apparently doesn't have afternoon or evening flights out)

Other airlines are even more expensive. It looks like the flights into LIT are ok... but the ones departing LIT are very few and super expensive.

Any tricks? If $400 is the best I can do that will have to do, but I feel like that's insane.