Hogs punch ticket to Omaha

FAYETTEVILLE – Playing his final game at Baum Stadium, Carson Shaddy put his hometown at ease early and started a nine-inning party Monday night that ended with a trip to Omaha.

The fifth-year senior from Fayetteville deposited the third pitch he saw into the Hog Pen for a three-run homer, capping a five-run first inning. Arkansas never looked back and cruised to a 14-4 win over South Carolina in Game 3 of the Fayetteville Super Regional.

“I really wasn’t trying to do anything too much,” Shaddy said. “I was just trying to put the bat on the ball, trying to see the ball up and I think the baseball gods were on my side tonight”

The victory gives the Razorbacks a spot in the College World Series for the ninth time in school history, including five under head coach Dave Van Horn.

Omaha is a fitting venue for Arkansas’ final games of the 2018 season, one that began with a preseason top-five ranking and never fell out of the top 10 as any point during the year.

“This season has been a grind and there’s been a lot of expectation, which probably they feel as much as the coaching staff does, and they’ve handled it every day,” Van Horn said. “They kind of showed you what they were made of tonight because they took all of the drama out of that game, which I really appreciate.”

For the first time in school history, the Razorbacks played the same opponent seven times during the season and South Carolina proved to be a worthy adversary.

The Gamecocks turned their season around after losing two of three games at Baum Stadium in April, winning their final five SEC series and clinching a spot in the SEC Tournament. They swept through the Greenville (N.C.) Regional, but unfortunately for them, that meant another trip to Fayetteville.

“We’re one of the best 10 teams in America right now, I don’t think that can be questioned,” South Carolina head coach Mark Kingston said. “We ran into maybe the best team in America tonight and it was a road block for us.”

Next up for Arkansas is a rematch with former Southwest Conference rival Texas at 1 p.m. Sunday. The Razorbacks swept a two-game midweek series against the Longhorns in March.

Their second game at the College World Series will be against SEC foe and No. 1 overall seed Florida or Texas Tech, another former SWC rival. Arkansas has already played both of those teams, as well, splitting four games with the Gators and winning a midweek game against the Red Raiders.

Those are appropriate opponents standing in between the Razorbacks and their first national championship, something that Van Horn said would mean a lot to previous players and his former head coach, Norm DeBriyn.

“It would be for Coach DeBriyn, who coached here when they first joined the Southwest Conference,” Van Horn said. “They had to play at the fairgrounds over here and the powers of the league would come up here and make fun of them and laugh at them with their facilities and he endured all of that. It would be big.”

Mississippi State, North Carolina, Oregon State and Washington are on the opposite side of the bracket and they begin play Saturday.

Campbell Bounces Back

One reason Arkansas fans were uneasy about needing to play a third game is because it meant redshirt sophomore Isaiah Campbell would have to take the mound again.

Their last memory of the right-hander was him putting the first three batters of the game on base with a pair of walks and a hit before getting an early hook in the Razorbacks’ regional-clinching win over Dallas Baptist last weekend.

Throwing a ball on his first pitch Monday and then issuing a five-pitch walk to the second batter didn’t do much to ease those worries, but Campbell eventually settled down.

“He goes out and I think the first hitter of the game, he throws a couple of balls and you can hear people start to moan and groan a little bit and get a little irritated,” Van Horn said. “He bounced right back and got through that first inning.”

When he came off the field after striking out Jonah Bride to end the first, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. They did the same thing a few innings later when he came out of the game for good.

Coming off a disastrous start the week before, Campbell gave the Razorbacks four strong innings. He limited South Carolina to only two earned runs on four hits and two walks.

“I’m just proud of him for being thick-skinned and tough and taking what happened last week and turning it into a positive and he helped us get to Omaha,” Van Horn said. “I’m just proud of him for being mature enough to handle that without being upset at me or anybody else and just going out and working.”

The only blemish in his outing was a weird wild pitch in the fourth inning that allowed two runs to score because catcher Grant Koch was confused by the home plate umpire’s call. Van Horn said he thought the ball hit the batter’s foot, which would make it a dead ball and no one could advance, but it wasn’t a play that could be reviewed in the super regional.

Campbell’s five strikeouts were also more than Blaine Knight (four) and Kacey Murphy (none) had in their starts against the Gamecocks.

That is a surprising statistic considering the up-and-down year the 24th-round draft pick has had up to this point, but pitching coach Wes Johnson said he had a good week of practice and regained his confidence.

“I brought him in and I showed him every strikeout he had all season, all the video,” Johnson said. “I said, ‘You watch this, and I want you to watch it and watch it and watch it, because you’re going to take that mound and dominate,’ and by gosh he did it.”

With his newfound confidence, Campbell said his start in the regional was long gone from his memory when he pitched Monday with a spot in the College World Series on the line.

“I didn’t put any pressure on myself,” Campbell said. “You live for this moment. It’s Game 3 of a super regional to go to Omaha. That’s what you’ve dreamed about your whole life, to go to Omaha.”

Piling It On

As it has done to many teams at Baum Stadium this season, Arkansas scored early and often in Monday’s victory.

That wasn’t the case in the first two games of the super regional, when South Carolina scored first and the Razorbacks had to play from behind.

Even after Cody Morris limited them to one unearned run in five innings to help force a Game 3, Arkansas’ hitters felt good going into the game because the Gamecocks had used up a lot of their bullpen.

“Their pitcher last night threw a heck of a game and we tip our cap to him, but we came out today and kind of knew we were in the driver’s seat with their best reliever throwing 40 or 50 pitches in Game 1,” Eric Cole said. “We knew it was kind of up to us.”

Cole set the tone by drawing a leadoff walk and eventually scoring on a throwing error. It was the first of five times he reached base – 3 for 3 with two walks – and he came around to score each time.

After going 1 for 5 with three strikeouts in Sunday’s loss, Luke Bonfield wasted no time getting back on track Monday. He drove in a runs with singles in the first, second and fifth innings and mixed in a sacrifice fly to match a season high with four RBIs.

“It was obviously a big relief for me because I didn’t have that great of a night last night,” Bonfield said. “They were throwing me away all series long.

“I was pulling off the ball, trying to do too much probably. I just stuck with a good approach and was able to put some good swings on it and help my team win.”

Dominic Fletcher gave the Razorbacks a one-touchdown lead, 7-0, with a sacrifice fly in the second inning and they exploded for another five runs in the fifth, highlighted by Casey Martin’s two-run double that likely could have been a bases-clearing triple had Cole not needed to hold up at first in case the ball was caught in deep centerfield.

The final run for Arkansas came on a one-out solo home run by Eric Cole in the seventh inning.

Van Horn’s Message

When Arkansas dropped Sunday’s game that would have clinched the super regional in two games, Van Horn wanted to make sure his team didn’t get too uptight about playing a winner-take-all Game 3.

Before they left the ballpark, he gave his team a two-minute speech about pressure in an attempt to take the edge off his players and get them to relax.

“The gist of it was pressure is when you have two kids, a mortgage, a car payment and you have to go home and tell your wife that you just lost your job,” Van Horn said. “I told them that was pressure. This is nothing. This is fun.”

The message was well-received by the Razorbacks, as Van Horn even commented to his assistants before the game that he liked the vibe he got in the locker room.

“It was like they were look, but they were being quiet,” Van Horn said. “It’s hard to explain it. I just felt like, ‘Man, these guys are locked in.’ … You could just tell these guys were here and they meant business.”

Senior Ovation

Hollywood couldn’t have scripted a more perfect final at bat for Arkansas, as all three seniors – Bonfield, Shaddy and Jared Gates – came to the plate in the bottom of the eighth.

Bonfield led off the inning by grounding out to third base, but he receiving a standing ovation and his signature “Luuuuke” cheer as he jogged off the field. When he got back into the dugout, his teammates greeted him at the steps with hugs and high fives.

“It was hard not to get choked up,” Bonfield said. “This has been the best four years of my life, at this stadium, these fans. I just really have to thank Coach Van Horn for letting me come here, play for him and experience this because this is a dream.”

After Fletcher flew out to center for the second out, Shaddy stepped into the box as the crowd chanted his name.

“I have a routine that I go through and I had to actually kind of step back out of it because I was starting to choke up a little bit,” Shaddy said. “I took that extra swing and got myself right.”

He managed to pull himself together and delivered a two-out single in his final plate appearance at Baum Stadium to finish the game 2 for 5.

That extended the inning and gave Gates one more at bat, as well. Despite being a junior college transfer who hasn’t had the best numbers in his two years at Arkansas, the fans showed their appreciation for his postseason performances with another standing ovation.

Dingers

Shaddy’s first-inning home run not only gave the Razorbacks an insurmountable lead, but it also broke the UA single-season record for homers set in 2010.

It was a record that Arkansas was on pace to break nearly all season thanks to a powerful lineup that features four players with at least 13 long balls: Shaddy (14), Heston Kjerstad (14), Martin (13) and Cole (13).

Bonfield and Fletcher aren’t too far behind, with eight apiece, and Koch has seven.

“The home runs and the offense, it’s hard to predict that, but we did see in the fall one of two things,” Van Horn said. “Either we can’t pitch or we can really hit, because we hit our pitchers pretty good. We felt like we could pitch a little bit, so we felt good about the offense.”

Other Tidbits

-The final game of the Fayetteville Super Regional drew 11,217 fans, which ranks sixth in Baum Stadium history. That brings the three-game attendance for the weekend to 34,420, which is nearly 13,000 more than the next closest super regional (Austin – 21,583).

-At four hours and one minute, Monday’s game was Arkansas’ fourth longest of the season: April 29 vs. Alabama (4:27), April 3 vs. ULM in 10 innings (4:14) and March 16 vs. Kentucky (4:09).

-It isn’t nearly as sexy as the home run record, but the Razorbacks also tied the single-season school record for sacrifice flies in a season with 42 by notching three Monday. They also had 42 sacrifice flies in 1995.

-With two hits Monday, Martin now has 77 this season, surpassing Dominic Ficociello (2011) and Jeff King (1984) for second on the UA freshman line. He trails only teammate Kjerstad, who has 81 hits after going 0 for 2 with a couple of walks in the game.

-South Carolina outfielder Jacob Olson provided the rest of the Gamecocks’ offense Monday night, hitting solo home runs in the seventh and eighth innings. Of his 55 hits this season, 32 have been extra-base hits (20 doubles, 12 home runs). Despite owning a .234 batting average, Olson finished the season with an impressive .472 slugging percentage.