FAYETTEVILLE -- Arkansas won two of its three exhibition baseball games this weekend including Friday's nine-inning contest 8-1.

On Saturday, Oklahoma State took the first five-inning game 6-3 before the Hogs won 7-1 in the third and final contest of the day. It was also a five-inning game.

The Friday game saw Dave Van Horn pitch what is projected to be his four starters. Arkansas started Gabe Gaeckle and he was followed to the mound by East Carolina transfer Zach Root, Gage Wood and Ohio State transfer Landon Beidelschies.

In all, Arkansas threw seven pitchers on Friday with them striking out 18, walking one and allowing only two hits.

“We have had a really good fall offensively hitting and you think about our hitters, who have they been facing?," Van Horn said. "Our pitchers. If you can hit our pitching, you ought to be able to hit anybody because I think our staff is going to be one of the best in the country if we stay healthy.

“You are seeing lefties and righties and a lot of velocity with secondary pitches. They are coming along and they are fighting to play.”

Third baseman Brent Iredale was perfect in four at bats while Wehia Aloy, Reese Robinett and Nolan Souza each chipped in two on a night when the Razorbacks piled up 13 hits.

“I told our team we hit a lot of home runs this fall, but we didn’t hit one today and still scored eight runs and I loved that,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said. “…We created a lot of good innings with walks, fouled off a lot of pitches, got a few good two-strike hits and the pitching was just lights out.”

The Hogs then sent a pair of freshmen to the mound in Cole Gibler and Carson Wiggins and finished up with Christian Foutch. Wiggins' fast ball was clocked at 101 miles per hour.

Oklahoma State Coach Josh Holiday was impressed with the Arkansas pitching and team.

“It is such a different experience when you go from kind of inter-squading and kind of rolling through the different stages of learning about each other and learning about your team and working on things,” Holliday said. “Then you find yourself against a pretty good team in a road environment and it changes quick and you saw that tonight. I think we ran into a very good team with a very good list of pitchers.

“That was a strong list and those kids had some great stuff and they played good. They are a good ball club and we didn’t play with probably enough certainty tonight as we need to. Those guys pitching tonight, you could have snuck some of them in a Dodgers or Padres uniform tonight and they could have held their own. Those are some talented guys.”

In Saturday's first game, Arkansas pitcher Ben Bybee, Will McEntire and Tate McGuire pitched the first game’s opening four innings and gave up two runs each with Dylan Carter pitching a scoreless fifth frame.

“The first game (on Saturday) we gave up four home runs in four innings,” Van Horn said. “That was the difference in the game. We still got to hit, we left some runners (seven) out there.”

In the nightcap, shortstop Tyler Holland’s three-run homer capped a five-run fourth inning that expanded a 2-0 lead to a 7-0 one.

Van Horn started nine players in the last scrimmage that had not played previously this weekend and five pitchers who had not seen any action yet.

He sent Parker Coil, Steele Eaves, Tag Andrews, Luke Williams and Lance Davis to the mound in a game in which both teams had 5 hits.

  “Obviously the second game, I played a completely different lineup and you know how baseball works sometimes, we scored seven runs,” Van Horn said.  

Photos Courtesy of Craven Whitlow CW3 Sports Action