Arkansas’ sixth-inning outburst against Missouri extends win streak to 12

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

One the floodgates opened in the sixth inning Saturday afternoon at Baum-Walker Stadium, the onslaught was on.

Peyton Stovall, Wehiwa Aloy and Kendall Diggs all hit back-to-back-back to home runs in what turned into a six-run, sixth inning as No. 1 Arkansas blanked Missouri 6-0 before a crowd of 10,434 fans.

It was the 12th straight win for the Razorbacks (16-2) with pitchers Brady Tygart and Will McEntire (2-0) combining to hurl a one-hitter and the program’s second shutout in as many days.

“You have to have some things really fall into place to hit three in-a-row,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said. “It’s hard to hit back-to-back, honestly. The way it was going today, it was hard for us to get a hit.

“For us to get I think five in that one inning, and three of those were with two strikes, and on those three swings we drove in four runs. Big inning for us, especially in a conference game that we hadn’t done much. It almost felt like we were going to waste a good pitching performance there.

The victory also clinched the Razorbacks’ seventh straight SEC-opening series win with Sunday’s finale at 2 p.m. against the Tigers (9-10, 0-2) left to play.

Tygart and Missouri starter Javyn Pimental (0-1) matched scoreless and hitless frames through the three innings.

Missouri’s Trevor Austin got the game’s first hit in the fourth before Tygart walked the bases loaded.

Tygart – who fanned seven and gave up a hit in 4 2/3 innings – escaped unscathed when shortstop Aloy made a leaping grab that likely saved at least two runs.

“Right when he hit it, it was right at him,” Van Horn said. “It was just a matter of if he could jump high enough to catch it. Looks like he did.”

Missouri coach Kerrick Jackson was understandably disappointed with coming up empty in that inning and in the fifth.

Missouri head coach Kerrick Jackson chose to take out Pimental to start the sixth and brought in Bryce Mayer.

Stovall, Aloy and Diggs all greeted him rudely for a lighting quick 3-0 lead.

Missouri transfer Ross Lovich tripled home two runs and scored on a wild pitch to plate the sixth run before the inning closed.

“It was one of those games where neither team, neither offense is doing much,” Stovall said. “I was fortunate enough to put a good swing on the ball and I felt like that got our dugout going.

“Wehiwa had a great swing. He hit one out and, obviously, Diggs. Me and Diggs were actually joking after the game. I’ve felt like since we’ve been here, we’ve hit like four or five that were back-to-back.

“If there’s a record that we want to check to see if we’re up there. But no, it was nice to get that started.

“Like I said, credit to their starter. He did really good. We put some good swings on those balls in the sixth.”

McEntire, who hurled 4 1/3 hitless innings while fanning 5, took it home from there.

“Yeah, just really McEntire was outstanding finishing the game,” Van Horn said. “Brady’s pitch count got up and he didn’t have his stuff but he battled out there.

“You think about the fourth inning where they had a chance to take the lead and line out. Two pitches before that was strike three on a breaking ball and they didn’t call it. The game can change on one pitch.
“Thank goodness we had the shortstop shifted around a little bit. All the little things add up. Just moving him, a little scouting going on there that can do that. He lines out, we hold him there.”

Jackson saw that as a turning point in the game.

“We had little thing going there where Garcia hits that line drive and unfortunately hit it right at the shortstop,” Jackson said. “That ball is four inches taller and we are talking about a different story there.

“We have a hit and run situation (in the fifth) where J-Lo (Jackson Lovich) hits a line drive right at the shortstop, runners are in motion. A little bit more to the, a little bit more to the right, we are talking about a different situation. But that’s how it goes some times.

“So we have just got to get our guys to understand stay consistent with what it is you are doing and don’t try to change just because it didn’t go our way at that point.”

Jackson notes its just how the game of baseball makes no sense at time.

“That’s what the game does,” Jackson said. “ It does not reward you when you deserve to be rewarded. We just have to get our guys to be consistent and then some of those things start falling our way.”

Jackson chose to take out Pimental after the fifth.

“He didn’t have his best stuff, didn’t have his best command, but he just competed and that’s all we ask these guys to do all the time is just compete,” Jackson said.

“When I made the trip out there, I just went and told him that ‘man, you are searching for stuff that you don’t have today so let’s just be the best pitcher that you can be today and see where that leads us.

“And he did that and that was a gutsy performance on his part because the fastball was a little bit down, he couldn’t find the breaking ball consistently, but when he did land pitches, you could see what he is capable of doing and we were able to get out of some situations.”

Mayer was jumped on right away.

“He just missed, made some misses that leads to execution and we don’t execute them and good hitting teams take advantage when you make mistakes and they did that.

“Unfortunately on the opposite side of that, we didn’t. They made mistakes and we didn’t take advantage of those.”

Jackson still felt like he made rhe right decision.

“Again, and we talked about it all the time, is if anybody can go and show me the amount of success that a pitcher has the third time through the order in the SEC, I would love to see it,” Jackson said.

“ And there are outliers, some of your first-round type guys, but the majority of guys don’t have success that third time through – and specifically on a day when he wasn’t that sharp – we didn’t want to roll the dice and do that.

“He was going to make it a tough decision for me if he had not given up that bloop hit. I couldn’t take him out at that point because you don’t want to rob him of that (no-hitter) opportunity.

“But him giving up that hit and we expect our guys to be able to come in and shut it down and throw strikes and compete.”

Jackson was impressed with McEntire.
“That cutter is the pitch,” Jackson said. “You think about him, when you see him throw that cutter, you think about (Arkansas All-American Kevin) Kopps and how well he was with his cutter.

“But again, we could have made him make some adjustments and understood, hey this is what he is going to do so let’s try and take that away from him and force him to beat us with something other than that.

“We just really didn’t do that today.”

Photo by John D. James