FAYETTEVILLE -- On a day when Dave Van Horn hoped to get good pitching since he had used 10 the first two games of the series the trio of Gage Wood, Landon Beidelschies and Will McEntire delivered for an 8-4 win over No. 17 Tennessee.
No. 5 Arkansas (43-12, 20-10) only had to use three pitchers against Tennessee (41-15, 16-14) in winning the series following Thursday night's loss. In addition to the pitching, Arkansas got timely hitting scoring its eight runs on just seven hits. Among the hits was a grand slam by Ryder Helfrick in the bottom of the third. Van Horn was happy with his squad as they got to 20 conference wins and have almost certainly locked down a Top-8 national seed. The Hogs will also get a double bye at the SEC Tournament this next week.
"As far as pitching wise, Gage had really good stuff," Van Horn said. "He just wasn’t locating quite the way we were hoping. Give Tennessee credit, they fouled off pitches and they worked him and got his pitch count up there. And then we had like a 30-minute inning so we decided we’d better get him. Landon gave us two really good innings. The third inning you could see by the numbers the fastball went from 92-93-94 to 90 and you know it just wasn’t good. I think he got us an out there then a walk and a homer.
"We had Will ready to go and Will pitched great. Just filling up the zone with fastballs, cutters and curveballs and just did a tremendous job. Because their lefty came in and shut us down pretty good at the end. It almost looked like both teams were getting a little tired to be honest with you. But yeah, big win for us."
The big hit for Arkansas was in a five-run third. Helfrick blasted his grand slam to put the Hogs up 6-2. Charles Davalan singled to start the inning. He went to second on a balk and then scored when Wehiwa Aloy's ground ball was booted by the Vols second baseman for an error. Then starter Tegan Kuhns walked to next two to load the bases. Tony Vitello went to the bullpen and brought in Austin Breedlove. That is when Helfrick greeted him with a grand slam.
"So I knew the wind was slightly blowing in earlier," Van Horn said. "It was kind of all over the place today and in batting practice the same way. But it’s warm and the ball was carrying. To answer your question, when he hit it, when it first left the bat I wasn’t sure. And then when it started going up, I said, ‘That’s gonna go.’ Just because it had a lot of backspin. I mean he crushed it straight up. What, 46 degrees or something like that. Yeah, but I was a little nervous because at the end it barely fell over the fence. I don’t know where it landed. I thought it was going to go in the green seats when it got up to the top, but I guess it came straight down. I don’t even know the distance on it but he hit it really hard, he just hit it up. To answer your question again, I wasn’t 100% sure.'
Tennessee took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first against starter Wood. The Vols got their first three hitters on base each with singles. But Wood recovered and struck out the next three hitters.
In the bottom of the first, Wehiwa Aloy doubled with one out. He scored on a Helfrick two-out single to tie the game.
Cannon Peebles singled with one out in the top of the second. He scored on a two-out double by Andrew Fischer putting the Vols up 2-1.
The Hogs stretched the lead 7-2 in the bottom of the fourth when Wehiwa Aloy hit a bomb over the fence in right field. In the bottom of the fifth, Reese Robinett walked to start the inning. He eventually scored the Hogs final run on a single by Logan Maxwell.
Tennessee scored the final two runs in the top of the sixth on a home run by Fischer with Manny Marin on base. That is when McEntire entered the game for Beidelschies and retired all 11 hitters he faced.
Wood (2-1) got the win. He pitched three innings allowing seven hits, two runs, walked one and fanned seven. Beidelschies then pitched 2.1 innings allowing just two hits, a pair of runs, walking three and striking out a trio. McEntire struck out four in his perfect performance on the mound. That was the second save of the season for McEntire. The three Razorbacks combined to allow nine hits, walked four and fanned 14.
"That’s probably a lot of hard work," Van Horn said of McEntire. "What I mean by that is he hadn’t pitched in a while. But he just kept working, just kept working, probably getting more frustrated, ‘I want to pitch, I want to pitch.’ And then when he got on the mound, he just let it go. He had to pitch fearless and he did. He just went at them. It was just great to see because we didn’t know if he was going to be able to go one inning or three or a couple hitters. You always have to have Plan B and we didn’t have to use anything, which is great."
Tennessee used five pitchers with Kuhns (2-3) taking the loss. Tennessee's pitchers combined to allow just seven hits, but walked nine and struck out 12.
Arkansas finishes the regular season in second place in SEC. Texas (42-11, 22-8) won the regular season title. LSU (42-13, 19-11) and Vanderbilt (39-16, 19-11) tied for third place.