Arkansas’ 8-run first inning sparks series clinching win over South Carolina

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

FAYETTEVILLE – South Carolina head coach Paul Mainieri has seen a lot of baseball in his time, but the tear the No. 3 Arkansas offense is on right now is still impressive to him.

The Razorbacks, who ended Friday night’s game with a five-run seventh inning, plated eight runs in their first at bat on Saturday en route to a 12-3 rout of the Gamecocks.

The win pushed Arkansas (22-2, 4-1) to its best 24th game start since 1982 (22-2-1) to 18-0 at home this season and gives it the opportunity to sweep series over South Carolina (17-7, 1-4) in Sunday’s 2 p.m. finale.

“I’m super happy with it,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Hirn said. “I don’t know how I couldn’t be. You couldn’t really ask them to do more as far as fighting at the plate and trying to get it to the next hitter, or sometimes just getting to the next pitch.” 

Arkansas has outscored South Carolina 24-5 in the series first two contests this weekend.

Mainieri was the LSU coach from 2007-21 before he retired after leading the Tigers to 5 College World Series and a national championship in 2009 .

“They’re (Arkansas) just such a good team,” Mainieri said. “They’re just relentless on offense, really. If you make a bad pitch, you’re going to pay for it.

“If you don’t make a play, you’re going to pay for it. We got to score more than three runs to be able to beat these guys.”

“It’s as tough a lineup as you’ll see in the country,” Mainieri said. “There’s no doubt about that. I mean, one through nine, there’s no breaks. They’re relentless.

“You can see by their statistics why their statistics are that way. They’re just very difficult to strike out. They’re very difficult to position because they use the whole field and they got power.

“So just a really good ball club. We got to find a way tomorrow to hold them down, and we got to hit better than seven hits and three runs.”

Arkansas’ eight-run first inning came mostly against South Carolina starter Jake McCoy, who was able retire two Razorbacks before being removed from the game.

McCoy faced 10 batters while giving  up 8 runs, 4 of which were earned ones, in an inning that saw 14 batters come to the dish in fa irst inning that lasted almost 40 minutes.

“I’ve seen some big innings, but in the first inning with 2 outs and nobody on, it was a great effort up and down the lineup,” Van Horn said. “I know they gave us a little bit of help with the ball that they booted…but we made a lot of that happen by the way we battled and just fought.” 

McCoy allowed four hits, hit a pair of batters, walked one and fanned one before exiting in favor of Roman Kimball

“I mean, he had already thrown 46 pitches,” Mainieri said of McCoy said. “I just couldn’t, in good conscience, leave him out there. I mean, I think he would have eventually gotten out of it, but you can’t let a guy throw 50-plus pitches in an inning.

“So, yeah, it was a shame, because I know the kid was competing hard, and he’s been pitching so well for us. It was just a catastrophic inning for us.”

Brent Iredale’s three-run homer started the scoring while Wehiwa Aloy doubled home a pair, two runners scored on bases-loaded walks and another on an error.

Aloy is thrilled to be part of an offense that put up 12 runs against Oral Roberts earlier this week and had earlier put up 10 in an inning.

“”It’s amazing because you always can come up in every inning of the game,” Aloy said. “Just the way the boys compete and doing their best to put pressure on the defense. It’s very fun.”

South Carolina did respond with a trio of runs in the top of the second against Arkansas starting pitcher Gabe Gaeckle.

Gaeckle had a scoreless first, but was pulled in the second inning in favor of Oregon State transfer Aiden Jiminez.

Jimenez would pitch 4 1/3 scoreless innings as he continues to add to his pitch count after an injury caused him to miss almost the Beavers’ entire 2024 season.

He lowered his ERA to 1.34 this season while pitching 13 1/3 innings over 7 appearances.

“He’s just a little different,” Van Horn said. “…He’s thrown a lot of strikes. He throws what I call a heavy fast ball with a lot of sink, a cutter and had the breaking ball going and I don’t know if he is 12 months out from Tommy John surgery.”

Arkansas veteran pitcher Will McEntire closed the game out with two scoreless frames.

“I thought Aiden did a great job and then Mac came in and threw the ball extremely well,” Van Horn said. “He wasn’t pitching like we were up eight or nine and not two or three runs and that’s what I like to see. He was throwing the ball 90 to 91 miles per hour, good cutter and throwing a breaking ball for a strike.”

Mainieri hopes his team can salvage a win in the series finale.

 “I would hope that they would respond positively,” Mainirie said. “Each game only counts for one game. So listen, these guys (he Razorbacks) haven’t lost at home all year, I don’t think.

“I mean, so they’re obviously pretty good. So you come here and you get one win, you can go home with some degree of accomplishment. They’ll sweep a lot of people here, I can promise you that. We’re gonna do our very best tomorrow, and hopefully, we can sneak one away.”

Photo by John D. James