Diamond Hogs take two of three from OSU in exhibition baseball series

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

FAYETTEVILLE – While it can’t be tabbed as perfect, a college baseball exhibition weekend in which Arkansas beat Oklahoma State two out of three games left Razorback head coach Dave Van Horn pleased.

Arkansas took the series with a 7-1 win in the second of two five-inning games on Saturday after Oklahoma State grabbed a 6-3 decision in the day’s opener.

The Razorbacks routed the Cowboys 8-1 on Friday night in a contest where the home team’s seven pitchers combined to fan 18 batters, walk just one and allowed an unearned run on just two hits.

“I think overall, it was a good series,” Van Horn said. “You look at the pitching side of it, I think we walked two today, one yesterday. So, in 19 innings we had three walks. Lot of strikeouts.”

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, 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 toed the rubber 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.

The three scrimmages culminated Arkansas’s fall team workouts with just a few left as the Razorbacks started workouts early.

“So proud of our guys, the way they handled fall ball because it was hard,” Van Horn said. “It was hard this year as far as, we had a lot of things we needed to work on.

“I think we accomplished some things, got better at some things. Now we can really focus on getting stronger and getting healthy and getting ready for next season.”

Oklahoma State head coach Josh Holliday, the brother of former St. Louis Cardinals star Matt Holliday, was happy with the opportunity to play three games

“Well, first of all, a lot of fun to be invited over appreciate Coach Van Horn for inviting us over and their athletic department for hosting us,” Holliday said.

“It is neat to see thousands of people show up for a fall intersquad game, a scrimmage game. That’s obviously awesome and a compliment to the people over here at the University of Arkansas and their fans.

“I don’t think there is any denying that they have got a pretty awesome fan base. So that was fun and we had a beautiful day, it’s a beautiful facility and we had a chance to grow as a team, which is what our focus was coming over here.”

Holliday looked as this weekend as a positive experience against a quality foe.

“When you just scrimmage each other, you don’t always get to some of the gaps,” Holliday said. “A team like Arkansas in a setting like this exposes some gaps for us and will help us.

“…We set out to come over here and compete against somebody else side-by-side. That’s what we set out to do. We also set out to learn and play well and we certainly learned and, at times, played well.

“We have a lot to learn that we can work on. I would say that it was very beneficial to our team.

“It is always helpful to see high-level talent when you are competing because it gives you a great chance to judge where you are at, give you an idea what you need to get better at and we took away some really good film that can look at and show the kids.

“So we will spend some time evaluating that, it’s some great information as we continue in our training.”

Arkansas and Oklahoma State were both without some injured and rehabbing players that will be key cogs for them when the real season begins in February.

“Yeah, but this is the fall, October whatever, I don’t even know what day is,” Holliday said. “We will have a full complement of players at some point and that will be a great thing.

“The players that were ready to go for this month got that opportunity and others will get back up on the ship when we get healthy.”

The Cowboys still have three more weeks remaining of fall baseball, which the NCAA allows to happen in a 45-day period.

“But we did what we set out to do with this opportunity – we learned,” Holliday said. “I didn’t put this opportunity on the calendar because there was a perception of needing to be 2-0 after this date. It was just about this team so we can speed up our growth.

“Our players now have a different feeling about then when we came here. So we will kind of use that feeling to fuel our training moving forward.”

Photo by John D. James