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Tennessee landed the first punch Friday night, but it wasn’t a knockout blow in the opening game of a top-5 heavyweight fight in Knoxville.
After falling behind 5-0 in the first, Arkansas rallied and took the lead on an eighth-inning sacrifice fly by Robert Moore to complete yet another comeback, beating the Volunteers 6-5 in front of a packed Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
It matches the Razorbacks’ largest comeback of the season, as they also fell behind 5-0 in a rubber match win over Auburn last month, and it’s the 11th time they’ve won despite trailing by at least three runs.
“The mentality for our team, it’s strong as far as they believe they can come back,” head coach Dave Van Horn said. “We still had eight at-bats. Playing in a ballpark that’s not real big in right, the wind was lightly blowing out, the ball could get out of the park. We knew we could get back in the game if we could hold them a little bit.”
Arkansas began digging out of the five-run hole almost immediately. Christian Franklin led off the second inning with a single and then Moore took advantage of the short porch in right by launching a two-run home run.
It was his 12th long ball of the season, tying Matt Goodheart for the team lead, and it pulled the Razorbacks within 5-2.
“He got him a fastball and he hammered it,” Van Horn said. “All of a sudden, it’s 5-2 and you could tell the momentum had swung a little bit our way and our guys definitely believe that they can come back.”
The very next inning, Arkansas continued to chip away at its deficit, but it almost didn’t happen.
Cayden Wallace reached on a two-out single and was nearly picked off. First base umpire Daniel Cricks called him safe, though. It was a bang-bang play, so Tennessee coach Tony Vitello used one of his challenges.
The call stood and immediately after the short replay break, Tennessee starter Chad Dallas tried to sneak a 1-2 changeup by Brady Slavens and it didn’t work. The slugger crushed it over the right field wall for a two-run, opposite-field home run to pull the Razorbacks within a run.
“I didn’t know it was out,” Slavens said. “Pretty sure I hit a slider away and just kind of went with it, battling with two strikes. That was after that long review. I’m glad Cayden was safe over there at first.”
Dallas has showcased excellent control throughout the season and came into the weekend ranked third in the SEC with only 1.53 walks allowed per nine innings. However, he walked back-to-back Razorbacks to start the sixth inning Friday night.
That set the stage for a game-tying RBI single by Wallace and it looked like Arkansas might blow the game open, loading the bases with only one out to force Tennessee to go to its bullpen. Instead, reliever Sean Hunley got out the jam by striking out Franklin and Moore to keep the score tied.
The Volunteers’ go-to bullpen arm needed just 29 pitches to retire the first eight Razorbacks he faced before Slavens hit his second pitch of the eighth inning to the right field corner for a leadoff double.
A wild pitch moved him to third and, after Franklin smoked a line drive right at the third baseman, Moore hit a deep fly ball into center that easily drove him in for the game-winning run.
“Franklin hits a line drive about 100-plus mph at the third baseman and he catches it,” Van Horn said. “We’re kind of thinking, ‘Wow.’ Then Robert did a great job of driving the ball to the wall.
“If he had pulled it another 15 feet to the right, it probably would have gone out of the park, but we had the lead and that was the main thing.”
Calling the Kopps
The reason Van Horn was so comfortable with the one-run lead is because of who he had on the mound.
He brought in Kevin Kopps from the bullpen in the sixth and the right-hander pitched his usual three scoreless innings, but they weren’t without drama.
In his first inning, the Volunteers stranded the go-ahead run on base when Kopps ended a 15-pitch at bat by Luc Lipcius with a strikeout. That seemed to energize the Razorbacks and they responded by going up 6-5 in the top half of the next inning.
Tennessee threatened to tie it up in the bottom of the seventh when Kyle Booker hit a pinch-hit, two-out double, but Kopps once again ended the inning by striking out Liam Spence, the SEC’s leader in batting average.
Although those were his only two strikeouts and he walked a batter, he earned the win to improve to 8-0 on the season.
