Key takeaways, box score from Arkansas' Game 1 win at Alabama

With two swings of the bat, Arkansas rallied to win its series opener at Alabama on Thursday night.

Peyton Stovall got the scoring started with a two-run home run in the fifth and Cayden Wallace added a three-run blast a few batters later, erasing a three-run deficit and carrying the Razorbacks to a 7-3 win over the Crimson Tide at Sewell-Thomas Stadium.

It was a much needed victory for Arkansas, as it secured a top-four seed and first-round bye in next week’s SEC Tournament while keeping pace with Texas A&M in the SEC West race.

“I hadn’t really thought about that until you just said it,” head coach Dave Van Horn said when asked about the first-round bye. “It’s hard to finish in the top four. It’s nice to know that we’ll go to Hoover and play two games. We win a game, we get to play another. Win a couple of them, get a bye. Just play baseball this time of year.”

As they have in recent games, though, things got off to a bit of a bumpy start for the Razorbacks.

Not only did Alabama jump out to an early 3-0 lead, but starter Garrett McMillan was seemingly on cruise control. The Crimson Tide ace was perfect through four innings, retiring the first 12 batters he faced.

It wasn’t until a leadoff single by Chris Lanzilli to start the fifth that Arkansas finally got a base runner.

“We laid off some borderline pitches and got ahead in the count a little bit,” Van Horn said. “Lanzilli getting a base hit kind of broke the ice.”

McMillan appeared to get back on track by inducing a couple of fly outs after the hit, but Stovall made him pay for getting into a hitter’s count. The freshman smacked a 3-1 pitch over the right field wall to pull the Razorbacks within 3-2.

“Stovall went down and got a 3-1 pitch and stayed through it, kept it low,” Van Horn said. “The wind was blowing in from right and it just kind of fought through the wind. He hit it hard and it got out of there pretty easy.”

Jalen Battles kept the inning going with a single — which likely would have been a double had he not slipped coming out of the box — and Zack Gregory walked to turn the lineup over and bring up Wallace.

Having hit the ball hard all last week against Vanderbilt, including a couple of Game 2 home runs, and also hitting it hard in a fly out the previous inning, the sophomore third baseman crushed McMillan’s 0-1 pitch well over the wall in left.

“We were just hoping that (Gregory) would somehow find a way to get on base so Wallace would get to hit,” Van Horn said. “Sure enough, Wallace put a really good swing on a fastball in and I mean, he crushed it. All of a sudden we’re up two. The game just flipped.”

It was Wallace’s ninth home run of the season, which is third on the team, and gave Arkansas a 5-3 advantage — a lead it wouldn’t surrender.

“Typically you want all of your pitchers to be ahead in the count as much as possible,” Alabama head coach Brad Bohannon said. “Typically Garrett is okay in neutral counts and even behind a little bit because of his secondary stuff and he is really good throwing strikes then.

“I don’t know if he left the ball over the plate or they just put some good swings on it. That was the difference in the game for sure.”

The two home runs did prove to be the difference, as Alabama didn’t score the rest of the night. However, the Crimson Tide did put some pressure on the Razorbacks by getting their leadoff man on base in three of the final four innings.

That was what made Arkansas’ two insurance runs in the ninth even bigger. With runners on first and second and two outs, Alabama brought in reliever Luke Holman to face Battles.

The Razorbacks’ shortstop quickly fell behind 0-2 and fouled off a pitch before smoking a line drive that hit the base of the wall in left-center for a double that brought home both runners.

“What a relief when that ball headed to the gap,” Van Horn said. “It gave us a three-run lead, then all of a sudden a four-run lead. It took a lot of pressure off the team and Brady (Tygart) out there.”

Here are several other key takeaways from the Game 1 win…

McEntire’s Surprise Start

After using the same starting rotation the first 13 weeks of the season, Arkansas caught some by surprise by announcing redshirt sophomore Will McEntire as the Game 1 starter Thursday morning.

It wasn’t a surprise to the Razorbacks, though, as Van Horn told reporters that he made the decision several days ago. McEntire replaces freshman Hagen Smith — who Van Horn said he wanted to give some rest, but likely pitch out of the pen this weekend — in the rotation, with Connor Noland moving to Game 2 to stay on Friday and Jaxon Wiggins sticking in the Game 3 slot.