FAYETTEVILLE -- No. 11 Arkansas stunned No. 1 Texas 9-0 Thursday night at Baum-Walker Stadium in the opening game of the series.
Starting pitcher Zach Root stole the show. He pitched eight innings allowing only two hits, striking out 11 and only walking a pair. Will McEntire pitched the ninth to complete the shutout. Dave Van Horn obviously praised Root's best performance as a Razorback.
"Yeah, really, really, really good job by Zach Root tonight, obviously," Van Horn said. "Eight shutout innings against a very, very good baseball team. I felt like once we got the lead he continued to get better. He didn’t start nibbling and looking for strikeouts. He was just trying to get outs. It seemed like his breaking ball got a little better maybe the second half of the game it got a little tighter. Then he had them all going. He had a really good change-up, kept it away. A lot of run and sink. He just did a really good job of getting the leadoff man out and throwing strike one. He got a double play ball and that was big there after we had just scored — I don’t know what we had, maybe five runs there. He gets the leadoff man and gets a double play ball. ... Just a great job."
Root threw 99 pitches. But only allowing two hits and owning a shut out did he fight to pitch the ninth?
"There was no fight because he sat down on the bench," Van Horn said. "I followed Coach (Matt) Hobbs. I watched his reaction and coach basically got him in a headlock. He didn’t react too much. I shook his hand and said ‘great job.’ He’s smart. He knows that was enough pitches. We’ve got some big games coming up and we’re going to need that inning somewhere down the road."
Root talked about what was different against the Longhorns.
"Yeah, it was just going out there," Root said. "Mentality-wise, I gotta just keep the ball all around the plate, and we had a good scouting report on them, and just had to go out and execute that. And gave the bunch of the other pitchers a bunch to look at to see what gets them out and just going out there and set the tone for the rest of the weekend."
The Razorbacks also had an efficient offensive attack. They scored their nine runs on eight hits. The Hogs got the scoring going in the bottom of the second when Brent Iredale laced a double to left field. Carson Boles followed and planted a one-out, two-run blast over the fence in left field for a 2-0 lead.
The Hogs got the long ball going again in the bottom of the third. With two outs and Justin Thomas Jr. on second and Wehiwa Aloy on first, Cam Kozeal blasted a three-run shot over the fence in right field for a 5-0 lead.
The Razorbacks chased Texas starter Ruger Riojas in the bottom of the fourth when they put four more runs on the scoreboard. Boles was hit by a pitch to start the inning. With one out, Ryder Helfrick followed with a single. Thomas then singled to plate Boles. With two outs. Wehiwa Aloy doubled to send both Helfrick and Thomas home for an 8-0 lead. Kuhio Aloy followed with an RBI single that plated Wehiwa Aloy for the final run of the game.
"And then offensively we got some runners on and we got I think four big two-out hits," Van Horn said. "Aloy had a big two-out double to right center. Kuhio followed him with a base hit up the middle with two outs. Kozeal with, I think the count was 0-2 or 1-2, two outs, two on, fought back to a full count and then caught what looked like a hanging breaking ball and hit it either over the scoreboard or off the top of it was a lot of back spin. Just a great at-bat. Just a great job of punching in some runs late in the inning. That gave us an opportunity to separate a little bit."
Cody Howard replaced Riojas and kept the Hogs in check for 3.1 innings. He only allowed one hit, walked a hitter and fanned three. Bryce Navarre pitched the final inning for the Longhorns. Riojas (8-2) took the loss. In his 3.2 innings, Riojas allowed seven hits, nine runs, walked one and struck out four. Texas Coach Jim Schlossnagle admitted he was trying to get more innings from his starter.
“I was trying to have him suck up a few innings,” Schlossnagle said. “I mean that his third start in two weeks, right? Because we did the Saturday deal against Auburn and then we brought him back on Friday to A&M and now it’s Thursday.
“I had a little bit of a premonition this could happen so it is going to be good that he gets the rest and has an extra days rest before we play next week when we play Florida, who is another great offensive team. So it will be interesting to see how he responds to it."
An oddity of sorts is no Razorback had two hits and everyone in the lineup had one except Charles Davalan. Kozeal had three runs batted in, Wehiwa Aloy and Boles two each, Kuhio Aloy and Thomas one each.
The win broke Texas' 10-game winning streak. How big was it to win the series opener?
"Well, you know, it’s like I told the team, that’s just one game and we’ve been here before," Van Horn said. "You still got work to do, but it obviously relaxes you a little bit. Maybe takes a little pressure off of you, but if you lose tomorrow night you’re even up going into Game 3. But there’s not a coach around that’ll tell you, ‘yeah, we’ll go ahead. I don’t care about winning Game 1’. It makes you feel a lot better. It gives you some confidence, as well."
Arkansas (38-9, 15-7) and Texas (38-6, 19-3) will play Game 2 of the series on Friday with the first pitch at 7 p.m. on the SEC Network.
