STILLWATER, Okla. — Hagen Smith notched the biggest strikeout of his young career and then slammed the door shut to help Arkansas punch its ticket to the super regionals Monday night.
The freshman left-hander struck out the hot-hitting Roc Riggio with the bases loaded in the eighth and then retired Oklahoma State in order in the ninth to finish off a 7-3 win that clinched the Stillwater Regional for the Razorbacks.
Including the strikeout of Riggio, Smith retired the final five batters he faced in a two-inning save — his first — and four came on strikes. When Griffin Doersching took strike three to end it, Arkansas secured a spot in its 10th super regional since the format was introduced in 1999.
“He just flat out was not going to be denied,” head coach Dave Van Horn said. “Just an amazing, amazing job by Hagen in that tough situation with all that was on the line for our team.”
The decision to go with Smith in the first place was a bold one, as the freshman had struggled in his last couple of outings, including in his start against the Cowboys on Saturday. He walked four and gave up two earned runs in just 1 1/3 innings and was removed having thrown 46 pitches.
However, it made perfect sense to Van Horn because when he asked his pitchers to text him with their availability late Sunday night, Smith’s message was the first to come through.
It popped up on his phone before he even made it back to his hotel room: My arm feels awesome. I want the ball in any situation.
“I had trouble sleeping last night,” Van Horn said. “I talked to Coach (Matt) Hobbs before I went to bed (and) I talked to him when we met at breakfast, and I said, ‘If it gets to the last three innings of the game and it’s tight, and our guys are all tired, Hagen’s ready to go.’”
That moment came when Zebulon Vermillion gave up a single to start the eighth inning with the Razorbacks clinging to a 5-3 lead at the time.
It was a bit of a shaky start for Smith, though, as he plunked Nolan McLean with his second pitch. After a failed sacrifice bunt attempt by Marcus Brown put runners on the corners thanks to a heads-up play by Cayden Wallace to throw out the runner at second, pinch hitter Brett Brown drew a walk to load the bases with just one out.
With the raucous O’Brate Stadium crowd on its feet, Smith dialed in and struck out Chase Adkison to bring up Riggio with two outs. Up to that point, the flamboyant freshman was 15 for 26 with nine extra-base hits and 17 RBIs.
Usually an aggressive hitter who likes to swing early in the count, Riggio took the first four pitches from Smith to get into a 2-2 count and then swung and missed for strike three.
“I think Smith stepped up for his team,” Riggio said. “He did what anyone would do in that situation - step up and put it on the line for his team. He did a really good job of that.”
As soon as he got the strikeout, Smith let out a lot of emotion as he left the mound and it seemed to suck the energy out of the home crowd.
“We need that stuff on the mound and once he got it together, and he struck out 9-hole, 1-hole, our team was jacked — and so was he,” Van Horn said. “We had to calm him down, because the game wasn’t over.”
Luckily for the Razorbacks, they got some insurance in the form of a two-out, two-run double by Michael Turner in the top of the ninth. Ace Justin Campbell was on the verge of throwing a second straight scoreless inning before Turner’s hit gave Arkansas a four-run cushion.
“Campbell just kept throwing changeups to our left-handers, and we told them, ‘Just sit soft. If he throws a fastball, just hope it doesn’t hit you. Look for a breaking ball or a changeup,’” Van Horn said. “He was really the only left that stuck with the plan and finally, after the fastball that was in that they complained about, he was just sitting on something soft, and he got it, and he hooked it down the line.”
Having calmed down after the big eighth-inning strikeout, Smith went back out on the mound in the ninth and got a fly out and back-to-back strikeouts to earn the save and complete the upset at Oklahoma State’s ballpark.
“They are a well-rounded team,” Oklahoma State head coach Josh Holliday said. “They have good offensive players that pick up the ball cleanly and they have a pretty good depth of pitching. They are a well-rounded team.”
Here are several other key takeaways from the win…
Web Gems
After scoring 65 runs in its previous four games in the regional, Oklahoma State had arguably the hottest lineup in the country coming into Monday’s finale. However, Arkansas kept it at bay for much of the night, including five shutout innings to start the game.
The pitching had something to do with it, but the Razorbacks’ defense was to credit for all of the zeroes on the scoreboard.
With a tip of the hat to Zack Gregory for a leaping grab in left field and Peyton Stovall for a diving catch on a bunt, Wallace and Robert Moore made the two biggest defensive plays of the night to end scoring threats in back-to-back innings.
In the second inning, Oklahoma State loaded the bases with two outs and Adkison hit a slow dribbler. Wallace charged in, barehanded it and fired to first as he left his feet and flew forward. The throw was on the money and barely got him, saving at least one run and possibly more.
“Wallace’s play might have saved the game,” Van Horn said. “That would have been one run in or he could have thrown it down the line, they had three in (and) wouldn’t you know who’s coming up next, probably Riggio, so he might have hit one in the seats because that’s what he did all weekend.”
There were runners on the corners when Moore made his spectacular play. He had to cover a lot of ground to get to a grounder by David Mindham in shallow right, then he spun and threw to first to end the inning, once again saving at least one run.
The Cowboys were threatening again in the fourth inning with a pair of runners on, one out and Riggio on deck. Reliever Kole Ramage was in the game facing Adkison when Turner fired a pickoff attempt to first and nailed Caeden Trenkle for the second out.
That allowed Ramage to relax and strike out Adkison to end the inning without having to worry about a dangerous hitter coming to the plate with multiple runners on base.
“Getting that second out is big time,” Ramage said. “It calms the situation down a bit, it takes the pressure off, just knowing that I’ve got to get the guy out at the plate.”
Finally, Chris Lanzilli made a sliding grab for the first out in the seventh inning. It was ultimately a sacrifice fly that gave Oklahoma State its second run of the game, but it could have been much worse if it fell for a hit because there were runners on second and third.
“That was a big play by Lanzilli,” Van Horn said. “I think the ball was hit low. The runner at second, he didn’t tag because he didn’t know if it was going to drop or not. That was big time. They got one run in, but the runner was still at second.”
Big Fourth Inning
Pitching the day after starting the elimination game against Missouri State, Oklahoma State right-hander Ryan Bogusz allowed only one base runner in the first three innings — a walk by Lanzilli — and struck out half of the 10 batters he faced.
It wasn’t until the fourth inning that the Razorbacks finally got to him. Brady Slavens got things started with a leadoff home run and then they got a couple of one-out free passes.
Moore moved them up on a ground out that Arkansas initially protested, saying it should have been a foul ball, but the umpires didn’t see it and it wasn’t a reviewable play. It ended up being a positive break for Arkansas because Jalen Battles ripped a single over the shortstop to drive them in.
Having advanced to second on the throw home after his hit, Battles scored on an RBI single by Stovall to make it 4-0. That created the deficit Oklahoma State was chasing the rest of the night.
Morris Delivers in 1st Career Start
After coming out of the bullpen for his first 39 appearances with the Razorbacks, junior Zack Morris got the ball to start the biggest game of the season.
The left-hander flirted with danger, but gave Arkansas just what it needed with 3 1/3 scoreless innings. He worked around four hits and three walks while striking out three.
“Zack looked great to me,” Van Horn said. “I mean, he seemed calm, cool and collected out there, just flipping it up there about 91-92 (mph).”
Following a perfect first inning, he walked the bases loaded in the second and put runners on the corners with one out in the third. Both jams ended with the aforementioned fantastic defensive plays by Wallace and Moore.
A couple of weak singles with one out in the fourth finally led to Van Horn turning things over to the bullpen and neither of those runners scored — with the help of Turner’s pickoff — to preserve the zero in the run column of his final line.
It was the longest outing of Morris’ career in terms of innings, surpassing a quartet of 3-inning relief appearances this year, and pitches (62). It also lowered his season ERA to 1.91 in 33 innings.
Making the performance even more impressive is the fact that one of those 3-inning outings came Saturday, when he gave up two earned runs and threw 49 pitches. That means Morris threw 111 pitches over a three-day span.
“I look back on it, I wish I wouldn’t have started him back in that (fourth) inning, but he didn’t really give us any reason to not send him back out, except that he’d already pitched once this weekend and he was probably getting tired,” Van Horn said. “I thought he did a great job and I would have no problem starting him next weekend or whenever.”
Stovall’s Great Weekend
A lot was put on Stovall entering the season. Projected by many as a first-round pick in last summer’s MLB Draft, the Louisiana native instead opted to play college ball and many tabbed him as the Preseason SEC Freshman of the Year.
Despite a solid fall and preseason, things didn’t quite go as expected for Stovall. He struggled offensively for a good chunk of the season and then missed a few weeks with a finger injury.
While he did hit a home run immediately upon his return to the lineup, Stovall didn’t truly break out until this weekend in Stillwater. With a pair of two-out RBI singles on Monday, he went 8 for 16 — all singles — with a walk and a HBP in the regional.
“I've seen him finally relax,” Van Horn said. “The kid had a lot of pressure on him to start the year. Too much hype. Nobody can play in this league that well, a lot of times, when you have that on you. I think he's really swinging the bat a lot better, swinging at better pitches.”
The performance raised his batting average 23 points to .275.
Other Tidbits
~Ramage was the first pitcher out of the bullpen and despite being charged with all three earned runs, he gave the Razorbacks a solid 2 2/3 innings in his third appearance in four days. He gave up four hits while striking out five on 38 pitches. “It could have been my last game ever here, so I just knew that I had to give it all I had,” Ramage said. “I was ready to throw until the game was over with, but we had a lot of people in the bullpen who could still throw.”
~The Stillwater Regional marked the fourth time in 10 tries that Arkansas has won a regional on another team’s home field under Van Horn.
~With the win, Van Horn now has 1,162 victories at the NCAA level (including his one year at DII Central Missouri, but excluding his time at Texarkana C.C.) — one more than Norm DeBriyn’s 1,161 NCAA wins, all of which came at Arkansas.
~Slavens’ fourth-inning opposite-field home run was his 15th long ball of the season, which is tied with Wallace for the team lead. It was also Arkansas’ 98th as a team, matching the 2018 team for second on the UA single-season list. The school record is 109 set last year.
~In a statistical oddity, Riggio has a ground-rule double in each of Oklahoma State’s three games against Arkansas.
~Of the 38 half-innings between Arkansas and Oklahoma State on Saturday and Sunday, the two teams combined for four total three up, three down frames. On Monday, both teams went down in order in the first inning.
Up Next
With the win, Arkansas advances to the super regionals for the fourth straight NCAA Tournament. It will North Carolina, which won the Chapel Hill Regional by taking down VCU 7-3 on Monday.
Because the Tar Heels are the No. 10 overall seed, they will host the best-of-three series this coming weekend. It will be just the second time the two teams have ever met, with the previous matchup being a 7-3 win for Arkansas at the 1989 College World Series.
