FAYETTEVILLE -- No. 5 Arkansas completed a two-game sweep over Little Rock with a 4-0 win on Wednesday night at Baum-Walker Stadium.
Arkansas (36-7) had run ruled the Trojans 10-0 on Tuesday night. Wednesday's game didn't feature the same offense for Arkansas, but did provide 16 innings of shutout pitching by the Razorbacks. Dave Van Horn took notice of the pitching in the two games.
"Well, I thought it was a great job by our pitching staff, obviously. Back-to-back shutouts," Van Horn said. "Just threw a lot of strikes. Strike one. Got ahead a lot today. I thought (Brent) Iredale made a couple of nice plays at third, really helped us out. You know, (Collin) Fisher, he was throwing the ball, that’s as good as he’s thrown in a while. Obviously, we’d have loved to have left him in there longer, but we just feel like we might need him on the weekend, so we brought in (Steele) Eaves. We decided to go with the young guys, kind of there early with a couple of those guys, Eaves and (Cole) Gibler. Give (Ben) Bybee one inning, and I thought he did a nice job. (Christian) Foutch went an inning. (Will) McEntire went an inning, and it worked out."
Arkansas had eight hits in the game. Wehiwa Aloy played a big role in Arkansas' four runs. In the third inning, Charles Davalan and Aloy started the inning off with singles. Little Rock walked Cam Kozeal and then Brent Iredale to plate Davalan. Aloy scored on a wild pitch to take a 2-0 lead. Aloy hit a solo shot in the bottom of the seventh. The Hogs added their final run in the bottom of the eighth when Gabe Fraser singled with one out. Davalan delivered a two-out single to get Fraser across the plate.
"I thought we played solid defense for two days," Van Horn said. "Just didn’t give them anything. Wasn’t like a big-time offensive day for us. Played a couple of different guys and rested some guys. Brought a couple guys off the bench, maybe defensively, a little bit of experience because the game was still tight. It was a good two-game series for us. I don’t feel like we wore ourselves out, and now we get to go play in Florida. You know, playing in the warm weather the last couple of days here, you know, it’s not Florida 90, that we’re going to see, and humid. It wasn’t 56, 65 degrees. It was, you know, in the 70s, so it was good to play in some nice weather. Good two days for us."
Iredale had been in a little bit of a slump until recently when he seems to have broken out of it. He had one hit and drew two walks on Wednesday. He hit a home run on Tuesday.
"Yeah, a little more bat speed," Van Horn said. "Trying to pull the ball a little bit more, but he did let a curveball get deep yesterday and hammered it into that net. Today, you know, he hit the first pitch right through the shift, hard. I guess just, the swing seems better. It seems a little more powerful. It’s not as uphill. I don’t know. Sometimes you just go through a little bit of a period where things don’t work out for you. Start pressing. Trying to change things in the middle of at-bats. Even his last at-bat when he popped up, I thought he took a really good swing. Just missed it. As long as the timing is good. You’re not going to square it up every time. I just see him kid of getting back to where he was a month ago."
The six Arkansas pitchers combined to allow just five hits while striking out 15 and only issuing one free pass. Eaves (1-0) got the win. He worked 2.0 innings allowing two hits, no runs and fanned one.
Little Rock (18-22) starter Noah Burkey (0-1) was the losing pitcher. He lasted 2.2 innings. allowing three hits, striking out two, walking a pair and two runs. The Trojans used six pitchers on the night.
Arkansas will be at Florida this weekend for a three-game SEC series. Friday's game will be at 5:30 p.m. Saturday's game will be on the SEC Network with the first pitch set for 2 p.m. Sunday's final game of the series starts at noon.
Photos: Craven Whitlow
