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Each Monday or Tuesday throughout baseball season, HawgBeat’s Andrew Hutchinson will take a look back at the pitching staff for the previous week and assign each unit - the rotation and the bullpen - a grade on their performances.

Playing three former Southwest Conference rivals at a Major League ballpark on opening weekend, Arkansas couldn’t have drawn up a better start to the 2021 season, going 3-0 with wins over Texas Tech, Texas and TCU.

Pitching played a key role in each victory, even though it nearly cost the Razorbacks their opener against the Red Raiders. It was particularly dominant over the final two games.

After allowing nine runs on nine hits and 10 free passes Saturday, Arkansas pitchers struck out 33 of the 68 batters that came to the plate for the Longhorns and Horned Frogs. Both games were two-hitters, with Texas getting shut out and TCU managing just one run.

Here’s the HawgBeat Pitching Report Card for the weekend…

None of Arkansas’ three starters went a full five innings to factor into the decisions, but that isn’t uncommon on the opening weekend of the season. Van Horn said going into the weekend that they’d be on pitch limits of 70-75 and he didn’t deviate from that.

The only one of the three starters who didn’t reach that range was Zebulon Vermillion, as he ran into some trouble in the bottom of the fifth against Texas Tech after sitting in the dugout during a lengthy top half of the inning.

Before that, the right-hander battled through three innings without his best stuff. Vermillion induced a double play to end the first, didn’t let a two-out error cost him in the second and then retired three straight - including a pair of preseason All-Americans - after putting the first two batters on in the third.