Arkansas blasts South Carolina 12-2 in Friday night’s series opener

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

FAYETTEVILLE – Since there are two other SEC baseball games this weekend between South Carolina and Arkansas, Wehiwa Aloy took it upon himself to send everybody home early on Friday night.

Aloy’s three-run, walk off homer capped a five-run Razorback seventh inning that invoked the 10-run rule in a 12-2 victory over the visiting Gamecocks.

The win before a crowd of 10,023 at Baum-Walker Stadium moved Arkansas to 21-2 overall this season, 3-1 in SEC action and 17-0 at home this season.

The 23-game start is Arkansas best since 1982 and the best ever under Razorback head coach Dave Van Horn.

“It’s what we hoped for, honestly, that we could put these guys together,” Van Horn said. “It took awhile to maybe put together an order — you could flip a guy here and there — but to watch these guys do their thing, I feel like they’ve bought into everything that (our staff) are talking with them about every day.

“I think they listen when we’ve got a game plan or a report on some of these pitchers we’re facing, then they take it to the game. And the other thing is they just have fun, man. They like playing baseball.” 

Charles Davalan was 4 of 5 at the plate while scoring 3 runs while Logan Maxwell hit his sixth homer this season and joined Aloy, Cam Kozeal and Justin Thomas, Jr., with two hits each for Arkansas, who outhit their foe 16-6.

“On the offensive end I thought it was pretty relentless, just fouling off pitch after pitch, especially in the third inning,” Van Horn said. “Got Stone’s pitch count up big time…so they pulled him. It was a really good job up and down the lineup. Everybody contributed.” 

Arkansas starting pitcher Zach Root (3-1) bounced back from last week’s subpar outing – 7 runs on 10 hits – in a loss at Ole Miss on Friday by going all seven innings on the mound.

Root allowed two runs on six hits, fanned seven and walked one on night where he threw 92 pitches, 61 for strikes.

“We just had to go out there and prove that last week was a fluke, and then just stack weeks,” Root said. “I’ve got to go out there next week and prove this wasn’t just luck. I’ve just got to keep stacking weeks and learn from Ole Miss, and just keep moving forward.” 

South Carolina fell to 17-6 overall and 1-3 in SEC action under first year head coach Paul Maineiri, the former LSU coach and the current college head coach active wins leader with 1,522.

The two teams will meet Saturday at 2 p.m with Gabe Gaeckle
(1-0, 5.87 ERA) and Jake McCoy (2-1, 5.25) getting the starting nods.

“Yeah, anytime that happens, it feels like a gut punch,” Mainieri told GamecockCentral. “It’s not very fun to get beat. With the 10-run rule, back when I was coaching before, they didn’t use it in the league.

“So I’m sure I coached some games where we lost by 10 runs or so, but I can’t remember them very well to be honest with you.

“But hey, listen, fortunately, it only counts as one game, and tomorrow’s a new day. It’ll be 0-0. We got Jake McCoy going for us, and hopefully, we’ll do a lot better.”

Justin Thomas, Jr.’s run-scoring single off South Carolian starting pitcher Brandon Stone (1-2) plated Cam Kozeal to put Arkansas up 1-0 in the second inning.

The next three runs were gifts as Brent Iredale and Ryder Helfrick both drew bases loaded walks and then Nolan Souza’s grounder was booted for a 3-0 advantage.

Maxwell’s two-run homer in the fourth was his sixth and pushed that lead to 5-0 as it also drove home Davalan, who had singled.

Stone lasted just three innings while giving up 5 runs on 5 hits.

South Carolina cut it to 5-2 with runs in the fifth and sixth.

Arkansas ended the contest with the five-run seventh featuring Thomas’ RBI double, Davalan’s RBI single and Aloy’s blast, his team-leading 10th of the season.

Root said he called Aloy’s game-ending blast.

“I said, ‘He’s going to get a homer right here and we’re going to go home early,’” Root said. “And the next pitch, he did just that. We can put it on in bunches, as you saw tonight.” 

Photo by John D. James