Top-ranked Arkansas rolls Tide in Tuscaloosa

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

When Razorback ace pitcher Hagen Smith is on the mound, it is certainly not advisable to give him a 3-0 lead before even throws a pitch.

But that’s exactly what happened in Tuscaloosa Friday night as Ben McLaughlin and Jared Spargue-Lott hit first-inning home runs and No. 1 Arkansas went on to down Alabama 5-3 before 5,524 fans at “The Joe.”

Smith (7-0) pitched six scoreless innings of two-hit baseball and freshman closer Gabe Gaeckle picked up his sixth save of the season as the Razorbacks (30-3, 12-1) won their 11th straight game.

The Arkansas starter served up his seventh quality start of the season and did not allow a runner past second base in the game.

“I thought he threw the ball really well,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said. “We challenged them a lot early with fastballs. They put the bat on the ball, didn’t get any hits. Just trying to pitch to contact.

“Really you take away one inning where he had to throw a few more pitches than the other innings, he might have given us another inning or two. But I thought his stuff was good. It seems like every week, we say the same thing. What was good? And what wasn’t? I thought everything we pretty good.

“If he throws like that every weekend, we’ve got a shot. Was he as good as he was three weeks ago? I don’t know. Because to me, he’s good every time he goes out. But we backed him early, made a few nice plays, got out there to a 5-run lead and he cruised along a little bit.”

Arkansas pushed its lead to 5-0 in the third via Hudson White’s RBI single and Kendall Diggs scoring on a wild pitch later in the inning of a game where both teams had six hits.

“Obviously it got a little tight there in the last couple innings,” Van Horn said. “Give credit to Alabama. They made a run at us. We left a lot of runners (nine). Had a chance to kind of bust it open.

“But they’re pitching staff wiggled out of a couple jams and we kind of have to hold on.

The hosts got a trio of runs in the eighth against Arkansas reliever Will McEntire.

Stone Hewllett faced two batters before Gaeckle retired all five Gamecocks he faced to finish it off.

“I thought our pitching staff did a tremendous job,” Van Horn said. “Hagen was outstanding for six innings. I thought Will  had kind of tough luck pitching. They spun a couple balls a couple balls to the outfield on him and maybe he didn’t get a call here or there.

“But Hewlett and then Gaeckle came in and just pitched great. The threw, like, 90% strikes and got ahead of everybody and gave us an opportunity to win that ballgame.”

Arkansas, which is on a 23-game home winning streak, won for the third time in just four true road games.

“It’s tough winning,” Van Horn said. “It’s tough winning on the road. We knew Alabama could really hit and we know we’re going to have to swing the bats a little bit better tomorrow.”

Alabama head coach Rob Vaughn’;sCrimson Tide (22-12, 4-9) had lost five straight after getting swept at South Carolina and losing a mid-week game to visiting South Alabama.

Vaughn was at least happy his team put up a fight after falling down 5-0.

“I told our guys that I don’t believe in moral victories, I don’t believe in anything like that,” Vaughn said. “We came here, we’re playing at home, we expect to win and I donlt care if we are playing the number one team in the country or who it is. When we have Ben Hess on the mound and we are at home, we expect to win.

“Moral victories fly out the window, but what I saw tonight from our guys is what I did not see the last five games, the last four or five game. I saw fight, I saw toughness, I saw 40 dudes in that dugout just spending everything they had for their teammates.

Smith, who had a no-hitter through five innings, fanned six and walk three and finish his stint out with a strikeout on his 96th and final pitch of the night.

“I thought we competed against Hagen Smith really hard,” Vaughn said. “I mean I thought we had tough at bats. The dude punches out 12 to 15 every game and I think – what did he end with? Six? We competed hard.

“The problem is we just didn’t quite finish it. We had a lot of at bats where we spoiled pitches, we took pitches, we fouled them off, we fouled them off again, but we just couldn’t quite finish the at bat. And you look up and he finishes it with a punch out or weak contact.”

Vaughn knows it’s easy to have a plan, but hard to execute it against pitch the caliber of Smith, who now has a 1.53 ERA in 47 innings while fanning 89, allowing 8 runs, 22 hits and walking 17.

“When you have got 98 and you are running it under a lefty’s hands and then you’ve got an 87 slider, it’s tough,” Vaughn said. There is a reason that is going to be a top five pick in the draft in July. But you just have to keep fighting and get the mistakes because that guy doesn’t make many. When he does, you can’t miss them.”

Smith sized up his Friday night effort on the mound.

“I thought I threw pretty well,” Smith said. “Defense played good behind me and offense scored a bunch of runs at the beginning of the game. I threw a lot more cutters today than sliders, so I think that kind of got them swinging. They had a really good approach against off speed, too. They didn’t swing at much off speed that was out of the zone, so you gotta give credit to them.

“My cutter was really good today, so we just kind of went with that a little more than slider.”

Vaughn hopes to see the same kind of fight from his team during Saturday’s 5 p.m. contest and Sunday’s 1 p.m. game.

“I told our guys it is not easy to come in and compete day in and day out like that, but if that is who we are…I told them when you put an Alabama jersey on, that is how you compete period,” Vaughn said. “The challenge is can they be every day. Everybody can do that once a weekend. If we can, this group will end up in a good place.”

Photo courtesy of Razorback Communications