OXFORD, Miss. — A complete effort from the No. 5 Razorbacks in the first half of Friday's doubleheader exposed a struggling Ole Miss team, leaving visiting fans with much more noise to make than the locals.
After losing 11-2, the defending national champion Rebels pounced on the team they eliminated in the College World Series semifinal for a five-run sixth inning, propelling them to a 7-4 victory in the nightcap and forcing a rubber match in the series finale.
Arkansas opened the scoring in the second inning for the second time Friday, as first baseman Brady Slavens drove in his sixth run of the day in the form of a single with the bases loaded and nobody out. It was the only run that scored however, as Rebel starter Xavier Rivas induced a short flyout and rang up two Hogs on strikes.
"Had a chance to really, really break it open in the second and didn’t take advantage of it," Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said. "We scored one run. I think that probably ended up costing us the ball game."
The three stranded runners came back to bite the Razorbacks in the bottom of the inning, as the lead evaporated in the matter of four hitters. Ole Miss left fielder Kemp Alderman drew a leadoff walk, and he eventually scored on designated hitter Reagan Burford’s groundout to third.
A defensive miscue that does not appear in the box score led to the first Rebel lead of the series in the bottom of the fourth. Alderman dropped a double into short right-center, as Arkansas right fielder Jace Bohrofen appeared afraid of a collision with center fielder Tavian Josenberger.
"I had it the entire way," Bohrofen said, "I heard Tavian say something and I just kind of backed off, but ultimately it's my fault, I should've caught the baseball."
Alderman found himself on a pickle on the next batted ball, but while the Razorback infield was trying to tag him out, Anthony Calarco advanced to second. The Ole Miss first baseman scored the go-ahead run on third baseman Ethan Lege’s RBI single.
"That cost us a run and cost us the lead," Van Horn said. "We had a 2-1 lead at the time. That’s ridiculous."
Just as the Rebels responded to the Hogs’ first run, the visitors did the same thing in the fifth. A two-out double off the bat of designated hitter Kendall Diggs sent left fielder Jared Wegner muscling 270 feet to home plate, where he slid in safely to make it 2-2.
Slavens had another opportunity to drive in a seventh run with two on and two out, but he struck out, stranding the seventh and eighth runners of the past four frames.
In his first start since March 10, left-hander Hagen Smith pieced together five solid innings, racking up seven strikeouts on 66 pitches, but things crumbled quickly in the sixth.
Ole Miss center fielder Ethan Groff took Smith deep to lead the frame off, giving his team a lead it did not surrender. A hit batsman ended the sophomore’s start, and former Rebel Cody Adock was the first man out of the bullpen.
"His outing, for Hagen, was average," Van Horn said. "That first inning looked pretty good, second inning just okay. Fought it a little bit, fought his command, didn’t have all of his pitches going. Had a little trouble throwing fastball for a strike when he needed to. Threw a couple of four-pitch walks to lead off innings and that was costly."
Adcock allowed a hit, threw a run-scoring wild pitch, issued a walk and surrendered a three-run homer to Lege, completing a five-run sixth inning that left Arkansas in a 7-2 hole. The most painstaking part of it for the Razorbacks was that Alderman popped up the righty's first pitch, but Slavens failed to squeeze it in foul territory for the first out.
Arkansas put two on with one out in an attempt to claw back into the contest against reliever Mitch Murrell, but the right-hander struck Diggs out and got third baseman Caleb Cali to ground out to end the seventh.
To that point, the Razorbacks were 1-8 with runners in scoring position and had stranded 10 runners, the most since their loss in the series finale at LSU.
"That's always a positive when you get runners on, but it's just capitalizing and getting those runs in is the tough part," Bohrofen said, "but we're going to do a better job of that for sure, though."
Christian Foutch impressed in the seventh and eight innings, logging his fourth and fifth scoreless frames of 2023, and second baseman Peyton Stovall cut the Ole Miss advantage to three with a two-run shot in the ninth, but it was all too little too late.
Things went much better for the Diamond Hogs in the early game, in which they logged hits in each of the final eight innings, creating no shortage of runs.
Arkansas made the Rebels pay for second baseman Peyton Chatagnier’s fielding error, which allowed Bohrofen to get on base to start the second inning. With two away, Cali launched Ole Miss starter Jack Dougherty’s 2-1 pitch the other way, clearing the right field fence for a 2-0 advantage.
Aside from the costly error, Dougherty was highly effective through four innings. He did not allow more than one runner on the basepaths at a time and racked up seven strikeouts, but when shortstop John Bolton landed a single in shallow right field to lead off the fifth, it spelled trouble for the home team.
Bolton was on third base in no time, stealing second and moving up 90 more feet on a wild pitch. He came home on Stovall’s RBI groundout, and Josenberger, who walked, scored the fourth run.
With one out and the bases juiced for Slavens, Dougherty hung an 0-2 fastball, and the senior deposited it into the Ole Miss bullpen for a lead-doubling grand slam.
"That was a big swing on an 0-2 count," Van Horn said. :Fastball kind of up and in, just short, quick to the ball and hit it out of the park. Just a really good swing."
The Hogs got one closer to run-rule territory with Wegner’s team-leading 44th RBI of the season. His second knock in as many innings plated Josenberger for a 9-0 lead.
A leadoff runner in the seventh threatened to reach the 10-run threshold, but the bottom of the order failed to bring him home.
While the offense was hard at work, Razorback left-hander Hunter Hollan was cooking up his third quality start of 2023. He struck out four Rebels and induced two double plays, never allowing multiple hits in an inning.
"The biggest thing was I executed big pitches when I needed to, like a 3-1 changeup, a 2-0 changeup that rolled a double play ball," Hollan said. "Really just not letting them getting anything going. I kind of put myself in some trouble, but I made big pitches to get out of it."
Hollan allowed two baserunners in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings, but he finished his outing with a zero in the run column thanks to a twin killing, a pair of flyouts and Dylan Carter, who went 1-2-3 against the bottom of the order to end the seventh.
Ole Miss finally found its way onto the scoreboard in the eighth, when Alderman took Carter deep to left for a two-run shot.
One of the best Razorback bullpen arms of late, Carter finished with 33 pitches, recording six outs in a game that was well out of reach. Still, Van Horn seemed to indicate he did not want to take any chances.
"One game at a time, man," Van Horn said.
Arkansas got both runs back in the ninth, cashing in on Bohrofen’s leadoff single. Diggs tripled to the right field corner, driving in the Hogs’ 10th run, and he scored the 11th on Slavens’ sacrifice fly.
Right-hander Austin Ledbetter got the call for the ninth inning, and he wrapped up the Razorbacks’ seventh SEC win in 10 games with a 5-3 double play.
Now 7-4 in league play, still tied with No. 1 LSU for first in the west, the Hogs can still win the series with a victory at 2 p.m. Saturday. The series finale at Swayze Field will be broadcast on the SEC Network and stream live in the ESPN app.
"Hopefully it’ll start out with us coming out and having some good at bats, whether we score or not," Van Horn said. "We’ve got to put pressure on them offensively. And then we’ll throw whoever we have to throw to try to win the game tomorrow."
Ole Miss will start freshman right-hander JT Quinn, who allowed four earned runs in five innings against Texas A&M last weekend. Barring a setback, righty Will McEntire is expected to get the nod after dealing with the flu over the past week.
"He seems to be getting better," Van Horn said. "He looked a lot better today and I think he’ll probably be ready to go tomorrow."
